


friendly neighborhood rap god

by IndustryRiverValley



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Gen, Humanstuck, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Incest, Multi, Past Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Spiderman AU, Trans Dave Strider, i just want everyone to know from the jump, itll be brought up in the story in passing at some point
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:14:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 53,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23761390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndustryRiverValley/pseuds/IndustryRiverValley
Summary: Dave's finally done it. He's rebuilt his life to something resembling normal, and he's got a network of family and friends to help him work through anything else that life throws at him. For the most part, that is.
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas, Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam
Comments: 126
Kudos: 134





	1. caught in the web

**Author's Note:**

> hi!!! ok so this idea's been kinda stewing in my head for a hot minute, and now that i literally haven't left the house in days, i've had no choice but to finally write it lmao. this is my first time using pesterlog formats. i hope yall like it!! contact me at squish_nebula on tumblr if u have any questions or want to know when the next updates coming <3

The music blaring through your headphones just barely drowns out the noise of everyone in the hallway. Usually, you’d be moving faster between classes, but you’re headed to lunch at the moment, and you happen to know that you have three whole minutes to get to the lunchroom, which is a whopping ninety feet away. So you decide you’re gonna take your sweet ass time, and hey speaking of sweet ass,

“Karkat! Turn around!” you shout.

That makes the one, the only Karkat Vantas turn back to look at you. He gives a small wave and then gestures to the back of the lunchroom. You nod, knowing that you’ll meet at your usual spot so you can enjoy a whole twenty minutes of awful people and worse food with your boyfriend. You choose to get in the third line, dooming yourself to room temperature square pizza, but it’s the shortest line and Karkat’s already sitting down with his packed lunch. You head through the line like normal until you get to the actual pizza part and are greeted by no cheese pizza, only pepperoni. You get the attention of the kind older lunch lady behind the counter, 

“Can I wait for another cheese pizza to be ready? I can’t have pepperoni.” 

She gives you a small smile and informs you that it’ll be a few minutes, but she can always pick the pepperoni off of a slice if you don’t want to wait. You’re actually really hungry, and your precious social time is ticking away, so you accept her offer. You’re electing to not think about the kosher-ness of a de-pepperoni’d pizza slice, you can have that conversation with Rose while you’re packing to leave for Dirk’s. 

“Dave, you need a fruit or vegetable before I can give you your lunch.”

You grab an apple that you swear to god has been there every single day for the entirety of last year and now this one, and hurry over to Karkat.

“Took you long enough, what did they handcraft that piece of pizza for you or something?” 

You pull a solemn face and nod. 

“Karkat, clearly you don’t appreciate the food artistry of our esteemed cafeteria. I’ll have you know that this is, in fact, a special piece of ‘za. You’re looking at a convert man, one who saw the error of his ways and changed.” 

Karkat tries his best to not crack a smile at your nonsense as he raises his eyebrows at you. You break first, laughing quietly and Karkat follows your lead.

“It is a special slice tho, lovingly picked free of pepperoni into the realm of dubious kosher-hood just for yours truly.” 

You punctuate this by taking the most delicate bite you can manage while also being as ravenously hungry as you are. Karkat puts his thinking face on and looks back at you. 

“Does that actually make it kosher?” He asks.

You just shrug and take another bite.

“I dunno, I figure I’ll have Dirk and Rose do a theology throw down about it sometime. But for now, yes, this pizza is kosher and I’m too hungry to think about it anymore.”

“That works for me, and hey are you still going to hang out with me at the restaurant after school? Because if you are, dad’s gonna let me try out one of my recipes, if you wanted to do a taste test.”

“Hell. Fucking. Yes. Kat I don’t think you understand, I would forgo all plans for forever to watch you do your chef thing.”

Karkat blushes at your enthusiasm and smiles at you, grabbing your hand underneath the table and holding it for the remainder of lunch; which you pass by showing Karkat some of the god tier memes that were born in your AP World History group chat. Right before the bell rings to end lunch, you squeeze Karkat’s hand extra tight. You want to kiss him, give him a hug at least, but there’s a sense of foreboding that comes with gay PDA in Texas. So an extra tight hand squeeze will have to do. Karkat’s geometry class is upstairs, while your Spanish class is on the main level. Karkat heads to the staircase and disappears in the crowd of students. You’re starting to head to class, only for Jade to run up to you with a thick stack of papers in her hands. 

“DAVE! I have some news that I know you’re gonna love!”

“Alright, lay it on me then.”

“I know what musical we’re going to be doing this spring and entering into State.”

You’re not sure what you were expecting, but it definitely wasn’t this. You move to grab the papers from her hand when she pulls them closer to her, and away from you. She tuts at you.

“Nope! You’re gonna have to guess. Here’s a hint; you know the show very well, so well that you actually suggested this show.”

You feel your breath stutter, because she basically just told you that you were going to put on Shrek The motherfucking Musical this year and you almost have to pinch yourself. First testing Karkat’s recipe later today, then this, and you’re going back to Dirks early. That’s way too many good things happening to you all in one day, you’ll have to keep your guard up for the rest of the  
day. 

“No fucking way, gimme that paper.” 

You look at the paper and sure enough, it’s the printed announcement for the show and auditions. You can’t really contain your excitement, and give Jade the biggest hug for telling you. Then the warning bell sounds, and you have to speed walk to Spanish. You’re not paying attention in class, you’re too busy daydreaming about running sound for the show and doodling in the margins of your notes. The rest of the day passes uneventfully, and you meet up with Karkat outside by the drop-off lane and you start towards the restaurant. You tell Karkat all about Shrek the Musical and how you can’t believe that it’s actually happening. As you both keep walking, Karkat hedges a question,

“You seem more excited than usual about this show, are you thinking of trying something different for it?” 

“What? No! Dude, I can’t act and I can barely sing without shattering glass and don’t get me started on my dancing nah, I’ll save myself the embarrassment, besides I’m more than happy running sound for it.” 

“Interesting. What’s also interesting is that you felt the need to tell me that even though I didn’t ask.”

Ah shit. Ok well maybe you were just kinda thinking about auditioning on the off chance you might get ensemble, but the more you think about it the more your stomach spins like a dry cycle. You’re about to respond to Karkat when he cuts you off.

“I understand that you’d feel that way because it’s out of your comfort zone, but I still think you should give it a shot. Oh and also, stop selling your singing short. I think you have a nice voice.”

You blush at the compliment and reason that he must be responding to you, as you have a habit of thinking out loud and being none the wiser. You pinky promise him that you’ll think about it, and by then you’ve arrived at your destination. You break into a jog to get to the door before Kartkat, and hold it open for him like the gentlest of gentlemen. He rolls his eyes at you and you just smile back, he loves when you do this stuff, he’s just shy. Karkat calls for his dad as you both toss your backpacks down behind the closed bar and start washing your hands. It’s weird that Mr. Vantas didn’t greet you both at the door, he knew you were coming. A few minutes later, after you and Karkat had migrated into the prep kitchen to start chopping vegetables Mr. Vantas emerges from god knows where and you notice right away that he doesn’t look too good. Karkat, being himself, freaks out immediately.

“Jesus fucking Christ dad, you look like a zombie. Come on, sit down; Dave, can you get some water?” 

“Yeah sure, one second.”  
You say as you do a fast-walk over to the cabinet full of clear-red tinted cups and fill one with ice water. You hand it to Mr. Vantas with a small smile and he only gives you a nod in acknowledgment. Karkat keeps pressing his dad to tell him what’s wrong, and once he finishes about half of his water he holds his hand up to shush his son. He looks back and forth between the two of you for a few seconds, and then just dives right into it.

“I saw on the news, one of those maniacs from the upper east coast have migrated down to Houston. Apparently they’ve been setting up camp in various southern cities; Atlanta, Charleston, Memphis and now here, just to name a few. And they’re making entrances.”

You and Karkat look at each other for a second, and then he turns back to his dad. 

“What do you mean by ‘making entrances’ dad?”

“The Vulture, the one I saw the report about, apparently robbed Tech’s science department of anything that could pose the slightest threat of bodily harm. They have no idea where he took them, where he’s hiding, or what his plans are.” 

The more he says, the colder you feel. You always thought that you had it really nice in terms of superheroes; no one was stationed in Houston so you got to enjoy your city life without the constant danger of fights, yet you still weren't insignificant because of the Space Station. It was the perfect taste of action for you, until now that is. Personally, you admired superheroes. They’re necessary for today's world and they provide a service you never could. You know Karkat isn’t too fond of anything to do with heroes, and his face morphs to show that as his father speaks.

“You’ve got to be kidding. Why here?”

“Probably because we don’t have a designated hero for the city, it makes us a vulnerable target.” You rationalize out loud. 

Karkat’s dad just shakes his head as he stands up, taking his now empty glass to the beer tap and filling it up. 

“Boys, I don’t know what this is gonna mean for all of us, but you’re both going to need to be extra careful whenever you’re out. Because things are about to change for all of us.”

Mr. Vantas takes his drink back into the office and leaves you and Karkat in the kitchen with a shattered mood. Karkat doesn’t feel like cooking anymore, and now it's about time for you to head back to your Mom’s place so you can get packed and be ready to switch houses tomorrow morning. As is custom, you take some leftovers from the night before with you in a little takeout box to bring back to your mom and sisters. Karkat insists on walking you to the bus stop in light of the recent news and you wave at him through the window after you get on. 

It’s about a fifteen minute ride to your mom’s house from the midtown area where the restaurant’s at, so you put your headphones back on and continue to blast music through them. You’re in a weird mood now, which is a good mood for listening to Andrew Jackson Jihad. The sounds of the angriest acoustic guitar takes you to another plane of existence until the bus runs over the tell-tale pothole that lets you know it's time to signal for your stop. You walk off the bus and along the sidewalk for the couple of minutes it takes to walk to your mom’s house. 

Despite your frequent absences at home, you really don’t mind spending time with your mom, honestly you think you both get along fairly well. It’s just that somehow, someway, she’ll find a reason to rant about Dirk. It’s really started to get under your skin over the years. No one chose for your family structure to be this fucked up, so everyone just shouldn’t have any hard feelings, but no that’d just be too easy. You get up to the side door and open it, kick your shoes off and announce that you’re home now, to be then met with your twin sister, Rose. She buzzed her head last week so her and mom had been having a passive aggressive standoff ever since, so you assume that Rose is coming to you so she can get a reprieve from mom for a bit. You give Rose a little smile and she gives you one back, you then extend your arm and feel your new favorite texture; her buzzcut. 

“Five more seconds, Dave.” She warns.

You do her the solid of actually counting five seconds aloud, and then removing your hand. 

“That’s seriously a good look for you, Rose. You look the grand supreme dyke more than ever.” 

as you say this, you walk off to your left, where the kitchen is and to your surprise, there’s both your mom and Roxy sitting at the table.

“Oh, hi mom, hi Rox.” you say.  
When Roxy gives you a weak smile and your mom gives you a somehow even weaker one, you get a bit nervous. You try to lighten the mood by putting the takeout box on the table in front of your mom. 

“I just got butter chicken and rice, I had enough to eat there so y’all can have as much as you want. I tried to keep it nice and warm by providing insulating cuddles all the way home, hopefully that worked. I’m just gonna… head upstairs now… pack.”  
You get quieter as you get to the end of what you're saying and start slowly backing away, towards the staircase. You think you’re gonna walk up the stairs in the awkward silence, but your mom stops you.

“Dave, I know this arrangement is stressful for you, but you know you have the option to stop it at any time, right?”  
She gets up from her seat at the table and walks slowly to you, putting her hand on your cheek as she continues talking. 

“You can just live here, with me, with your sisters; I know you love them, and I know you want to spend time with them, so why not? You could still see your half-brother whenever you wanted to. And think of all the extra time you’d have not packing up every week, you could be more involved in theatre, spend more time with Karkat, maybe even get your English grade to a B+.”  
She says that last bit as if it’s a loving barb, but you’re familiar enough with this situation to recognize it for what it, and everything else she’s saying, is. A genuine jab at you and a piss poor attempt at manipulation. You take another step back, dislodging her hand from your face and crossing your arms over your chest. You’ve had this conversation a million times, and every time it dropkicks your mood down from wherever it previously was. 

“So to start this off, you can call him by his name, you can say Dirk, it’s fun and it’s free. Also, this switching thing isn’t nearly as stressful as it used to be, I’m used to it and I actually kinda like it. I’m gonna go pack, do some homework, and go to bed now; if you don’t mind. Night mom, Rox, Rose.”  
You’re already climbing the staircase as you speak, and by the time you say goodnight you close the door behind you, snuffing out any counter argument your mom may have had. You’re packing up some of your school stuff that you’ll need next week when your phone goes off.

tentacleTherapist [TT] has begun pestering turntechGodhead [TG] 

TT: Can I come in?   
TG: not sure im in the mood to talk  
TT: Understandable. I just wanted to make sure you were ok. This one seemed a bit more pointed than normal.  
TG: yea i  
TG: sorry its just so frustrating   
TG: its not like i dont like mom or that im trying to leave im not i like living here and im fine with the switching  
TT: She really turned the emotional manipulation all the way up; that gentle cheek touch made my skin crawl.  
TG: i love her and i know shes not trying to upset me or anything but im so sick of this kinda shit  
TT: It truly is a load of shit.  
TT: Oh, and if it makes you feel better, the moment your door closed, Mother turned right back to me and said she misses my hair. So she's not too devastated by your refusal.  
TG: yea that sounds about right  
TG: no joke tho your hair looks great  
TG: im gonna go take a shower now  
TT: Thank you, and have fun, while you're doing that I'll consider whether or not I should forgive you for still being a night-showerer.  
TG: how fucking dare you. night shower gang forever  
TT: I'll let you keep thinking that. Goodnight, Dave.  
TG: night rose  
TG: and thanks  
TT: Don't mention it.  


tentacleTherapist [TT] has ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] 

You take a second to appreciate Rose, then curse her because she’s a filthy morning showerer and then move on to your far superior night shower, take your meds, and fall asleep.

__

The sound of your alarm and the morning with it comes far too soon, in your opinion. You give yourself a few minutes to just lay in bed and check your phone, you’ve got a few notifications from the 'gram, a few from tumblr, and then a couple from TikTok. You swear you downloaded it ironically at first but the format is just so easy to get lost in so now you’re hooked. You also have two messages on Pesterchum, one is a good morning text from Karkat, which makes you smile; and the other one is from Dirk. 

You decide to check the one from Dirk first, it’s more likely to be time sensitive.

timaeusTestified [TT] has begun pestering turntechGodhead [TG] 

TT: Hey Dave, just shoot me a message when you’re ready for me to come to pick you up; or to tell me that you’d rather walk. Your call.   


You weigh the twenty minute walk to Dirk’s against the possibility of making Dirk and your Mom cross paths. 

Yeah, you’re gonna walk.

You shoot Dirk back a message saying that you’re gonna take the walk and that you’ll see him in about an hour. You start dressing and toss your essentials into your backpack and head downstairs. You decide that you’ll just have a cereal bar while you’re here and eat a real breakfast once you get to Dirk’s. You decide on one with so much sugar it should be a literal crime and top it off with a bottle of coke from the fridge. You need caffeine, but god himself could not make you drink coffee. Once you’re all situated and ready to go, you scan the kitchen looking for your mom, but she hasn’t shown yet. At that moment, Roxy and Rose enter the kitchen one right after the other. 

“Oh good morning Dave, you about to head to Dirk’s?” Roxy asks through a yawn. You’ve currently got a mouthful of pure cinnamon sugar and so can only respond with a nod. Rose seemed to be thinking about something and just as you were about to ask her, she turns her head toward you.

“Are you getting a ride from Mother this time or not?” She asks this in an unusually sour tone, still not making eye contact.

“Uh, no I’m gonna walk. I uh, didn’t think it was a good idea for her and Dirk to be near each other after what she was saying last night.” You stammer out. 

For her part, Rose looks to the ground, very annoyed. Roxy takes notice and goes to put her hand on Rose’s shoulder, trying to comfort her,

“Rose, hey Rosie come on we talked about this, don’t let this get to you, yeah? You’ll see him sometime soon.” She says this and looks over to you with a sad smile. 

You’re a bit surprised honestly, you’d never considered how the strain between Dirk and Mom must feel from Rose’s perspective. After all, she’s as much his sister as you’re his brother and she rarely gets to see him. You know they text but, it’s just not the same. You go to give Rose a hug and as you’re doing that, an idea pops into your head.

“Hey, you can come with me you know? Not like for the whole week but just for the walk; hang out for a few hours, and Roxy you could come too. I know you’ve been wanting to see Dirk outside of school and it’ll be nice to have you two shepherding me to the apartment. I still don’t see what was so bad about bringing those cats inside but Dirk got his panties in a twist over it in a major way, so I’m sure he’d appreciate the security in knowing I won’t be doing any kind and selfless, loving deeds for the stray cat population.” 

Rose finally looks at you, and then to Roxy who looks a bit conflicted. Rose isn’t talking but the look on her face says enough; she wants to have some sibling bonding time. Roxy sighs and crosses her arms in front of her,

“I think that’s a good idea, I really do but, look Mom’s in one of her moods this morning and it seems to be directed at you this time around. I don’t think she’s gonna want us going out to spend more time around you and also Dirk.” She says, apologetically.

You had no idea Mom was upset with you this morning. Sure you hadn’t seen her yet but eventually you get a sort of sixth-sense to this kind of shit, and it makes your skin crawl to think that you hadn’t caught that. Not for the first time, you blame your meds for it. Sure they made you function somewhat properly and have made your life better all around, but you hate the feeling of not being as hypervigilant as you used to be, even though constant hypervigilance is beyond exhausting. It’s never gone well for you when you’ve been caught off guard. Once you get past that, you start to get a bit angry about it,

“What did I even do? Dirk is one of my legal guardians, he has partial custody of me and it’s been that way for years I mean goddamn it’s not like I made the fucking custody decision or whatever. Like, oh sorry I want to spend some time with the person who actually gave enough of a fuck to raise me.” 

You’re shouting by the end of your little tirade and honestly you’re surprised at yourself for the amount of anger you feel. Rose and Roxy look surprised too, both with wide eyes and slack jaws just looking at you. Suddenly Roxy shifts her eyes to look at something behind you and her mouth shuts instantly along with her whole body tensing. You feel the new presence and you turn to look over your shoulder to see your mom looking at you with an artificially indifferent expression, arms folded over her chest. 

You’re having to expressly ignore the alarm going off in your head reminding you of how Bro-like she looks doing that. You struggle to think of something to say to her but she doesn’t give you the chance.

“Don’t you have somewhere to be going now?” She asks coolly. 

You look at her, and then to your sisters, and then back to her. It’s dead silent in that kitchen, and you decide that you’re not gonna dignify her passive aggressiveness with a response. You grab your coke bottle and head for the door; you feel a bit bad that you just stormed past Rose and Roxy without a hug or anything, but you think they understand your desire to fuck off as fast as possible. 

Once out the door, you shove your headphones in and go to your angry Spotify playlist, appropriately titled, ‘>:(‘ and start walking off your anger. You’re gonna have to calm down a bit before you get to Dirk’s, you don’t wanna think about this anymore, you just wanna hang out with your brother and get on with your day. You’re ten minutes into taking the scenic route through the park when something moves out of the corner of your eye. You freeze in your tracks and scan the brushline where you saw the motion. You’re making pretty good time, and a little bit of woodland adventure sounds great for blowing off some remaining anger. Besides, you’d been needing to collect some new specimens for your collection, not like a little adventure ever killed someone. You take off into the tree line, careful to remain upright. You’re semi-familiar with this area and know of a small clearing where exterminators and homeowners toss the corpses of conquered household pests out to rot. You've been coveting the addition of a full snake skeleton for a while, so that’s what you’re keeping your eyes peeled for. Loosely following the path of the little creek that runs through these woods, you scan the ground for any stand-out shades of ivory among the dirt. 

That’s when you see it.

Across the creek, on top of a large, flat rock, sits the almost perfectly intact skeleton of a snake. It’s two feet long too, at least and looking right at you with its empty eye sockets. You hop the creek and gently shimmy the skeleton into your little bone bag that you keep on you for this exact scenario. You’re about to tie the bag up when you feel the distinct feeling of little legs crawling on your arm. You’re not anti-spider per se, but you don’t take kindly to uninvited crawl sessions. You spot the spider on your left elbow, and not knowing what else to do, you decide to tell him about yourself. Why the hell not? 

“Hey buddy. I don’t know what exactly you are or what you’re looking for but I ain’t got it. Actually wait, stop moving,” 

The spider stops for just long enough for you to note two things;  
1\. It’s the size of a goddamn half dollar.  
2\. That it’s an unnaturally blue spider with red and green lines all over it.  
As if that’s not enough to freak you out, the fucking thing crawls to your inner elbow while you’re frozen and just, bites. The pain breaks your shock and you swat at it frantically with your other hand. Eventually, it’s not on you anymore and that’s good enough for you. You grab your bone-bag and run like a bat out of hell all the way to Dirk’s apartment building. Thankfully, there’s no one in the apartment lobby to see or hear you pant while you wait for the elevator. You pull out your phone to let Dirk know you’re about to be at the door when you see you already have some missed messages from him. 

TT: Are you still heading over?   


From 20 minutes ago

TT: Dave, are you alright?   


From 15 minutes ago 

TT: Dave please tell me you’re ok.   


From 5 minutes ago

Oh shit.

You start to type out a message to him while riding up the elevator, but before you can finish you get to your floor. Once the doors open, you come face to face with Dirk, who’s looking less than happy. When he sees you though, you don’t get the chance to get so much as a word out before he grabs you out of the elevator and gives you a very tight hug. He sighs at you, 

“You really love scaring the shit out of me, don’t you?” 

You give him a weak smile.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be late. I just stopped off in the woods to find some bones right quick, and then I had this spider crawl up my arm and it bit the shit out of me. And then I ran all the rest of the way back here.” You explain.

Dirk’s eyebrows shoot up once he hears you say that you got bit by the mystery spider, and he asks to see the bite. You hadn’t looked at it since you got it, and it’s not looking good. The bite itself is a raised red bump that’s surrounded by a swollen area that looks like a bruise. There’s a beat of silence before Dirk says,

“Let's get you inside and get that dressed.”

You nod at him, and you both turn to walk into your apartment. Today’s been way too crazy already, and you just can’t wait for tomorrow so that everything can calm down for a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahhh!! i hope yall like this im really proud of it plz let me know what u think!! ill be writing the next chapter of this over the next few days as well as the next wwadg chapter, and dropping a new code lyoko fic *eyes* so there's much more to come from this au and i'm so excited for it! c:  
> also to settle any debate that may come, night showers are far superior and if u disagree ur wrong.


	2. let the shit hit the fan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW PLEASE READ
> 
> please read this before proceeding. this chapter has references to past abuse and specifically to CSA. if this is something that is a severe trigger for you, i would skip this chapter. if that applies to you, feel free to message me on tumblr @squish-nebula or instagram @lordroach_ and i will provide information on all the plot in this chapter. there is only one scene where this is referenced, and that part of the story is marked by asterisks (*) at the start and end. there is another portion where the events in the asterisks are briefly summarized, but with little detail and no direct references to the triggering material, this portion of the fic is marked with a double asterisk (**). this type of subject matter is not something i take lightly at all and it will never be the butt of a joke. if you are/were a victim of any kind of sexual violence need to talk to trained help and are in the US, please call this number:  
> RAINN: 800.656.HOPE (4673)  
> all of my normal, more light hearted notes will be at the end. thank all of you for reading this, even if you decide against reading this chapter or this story as a whole.

The dressing of the wound and the rest of the day goes by uneventfully. Dirk wins the coin toss for what to get food wise, so you get to have some more, though admittedly much better pizza for lunch again. You do your homework, fuck around in garageband, and just have a chill night; a far cry from your tumultuous morning. You dose out your night meds, say goodnight to Dirk, and drift off into a quetiapine induced coma.

At least you do for a bit, until you wake up with gnawing hunger, like the kind that you’d gotten used to when you were little. You drag yourself out of your room and to the kitchen. There’s some leftover pizza so you take a slice, then another, then another, and then you go to grab another only to be met with greasy cardboard instead. You take a second, this is insane, you just packed away roughly 800 calories in five minutes and you still feel like you haven’t eaten in weeks.

Maybe you should get some water, maybe that’ll make it go away?

When you turn to grab a glass from the cabinet, you see Dirk just kinda looking at you, with his mouth hanging ever so slightly open. You freeze; god what do you look like right now? Images of the Fresno Nightcrawlers pop into your head and it does not make you feel good about yourself. Dirk approaches you slowly, with his hands up and open, much like one might approach a hypothetical Nightcrawler, and puts his hands down on your shoulders. His shades are off and it lets you see the mixed look of confusion and concern that he’s giving you.

Aw fuck, you made him worried.

“Dave, hey, you feeling alright?” He asks, all soft and shit.

When you don’t respond for a second too long, Dirk moves one of his hands off your shoulder and the other to the center of your back, shepherding you to the adjoining living room’s couch. You go with negative resistance, not quite sure what’s happening. The two of you sit on the brutally loved couch and he fixes you with a very serious Look™ and asks,

“Dave, please, you can tell me if something’s wrong. Is it your meds making you super hungry again? You’re being fed at your Mom’s house right? She’s not taking out her anger at me on you, right?”

He, somehow, gets progressively more worried sounding as he talks. On top of that, with every second of silence that ticks by without you answering it looks like he’s thinking the worst.

You rush to ease his worry,

“No, no she’s not taking anything out on me; I get plenty of food and everything. I don’t know what’s making me feel like this, I just woke up randomly and I felt these stabbing hunger pains like I haven’t been that hungry in years, man.”

For his part, Dirk relaxes a bit once he knows that his worst fears aren’t true, but he still looks very confused.

“That’s… very weird. I think you have a psychiatrist appointment at the end of this week; make a note to bring it up when you see her and see what she thinks about it.”

You nod and hop up to write a note on the fridge’s whiteboard to remind yourself to write a note about remembering to tell your psychiatrist about this little happening. Planning stuff out calms Dirk down, so when he sees you going to start your reminder loop, he relaxes back to his normal state. Granted, it’s only ‘relaxed’ to Dirk, anyone else would still probably die from stress. Dirk gets up from his spot on the couch and trails behind you to the kitchen.

“Hey, Dirk? Uh, how much of that did you see?” You ask.

“Enough that I almost congratulated you on your perfect Kirby cosplay.” He quips back almost immediately.  
He was saving that, wasn’t he?  
Dork.  
You pass him with an eye roll and you go to finally grab yourself a glass and get some of that sweet sweet water. Something occurs to you as you’re watching the ice crack in the water,

“Hey, it’s stupid late. Why the fuck are you awake?” You ask, turning to look at Dirk

Dirk sighs and crosses his arms over his chest.

“Well actually it’s stupid early; it’s four in the morning. And I’m up because I have a job interview later today, I’m nervous about it and I can’t sleep.”

You roll your eyes again at the first sentence, and then chuckle a bit at the last one.

“Really? It’s that robotics startup, yea? Come on, there’s literally no one better at robotics in the whole state dude, fuck it the country even, you could just sleep through the job interview and still get the job.” You say with confidence. Dirk gives you a little smile.

“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind. You should head back to bed, there’s still three hours before sunrise and there’s no reason for you to be up before sunrise on a Saturday.”

He’s right, and now that you remember about Dirks’ interview, you’ve gotta be well rested to be a decent hype man, so you head back to bed; where you sleep until the sun rudely shines itself right into your corneas. This happens on a lot of sunny mornings when you forget to shut your blinds, and normally it sets you up for a massive headache and spots in your vision for the rest of the day. This morning tho, when you open your eyes, the bright light doesn’t hurt. Because you’re a scientist at heart, you decide to test your sudden photophilic eyes by looking right at the sun. You’re expecting to feel pain, but none comes. You scramble to grab your phone and flick on the flashlight. Normally just it being on in a room is enough for you to have to squint to stay comfortable even under your shades, but now the addition of that light does nothing.

Quite frankly, you’re floored.

You were born with photosensitive eyes, you were used to them and just accepted that that’s how you see things and it’s not gonna change; but now here you are, divorced from photophobia. You take in what your room looks like without the constant veil of your shades. You can see color just fine, but it’s so much more vibrant. You didn’t really realize the variations of shades of red that you have, none of your red books one the red shelf are the same shade, which is news to you. Maybe you’ll fix it sometime over this week. Your mental redecorating is interrupted by Dirk lightly tapping on your door and then nudging the door open.

“Good morning; I need your opinion.”

“Morning, and you know I’d give you my opinion on anything whether you wanted it or not.”

Dirk sighs and bit and nods slightly, then holds two shirts up, one in each hand.

“Which is better for the interview; short sleeve button-up, or short sleeve t-shirt?”

You tilt your head a bit,

“Shouldn’t you go for long sleeves? Be a bit more professional looking?”

“Dave, it’s April. We live in Houston. It is 90 degrees out with 40% humidity and no wind or clouds. I, under no circumstances, will be wearing long sleeves for the foreseeable future. So, button-up or no?”

The t-shirt is just plain gray, and there’s that same shade of gray on the button up, and that gives you an idea.

“What if you layered them, they kinda match.”

“My god Dave, no. That’s still unnecessary warmth, plus I’m not you, I can’t wear five layers at once. I have no idea how you do that shit. I’m just wearing the t-shirt, thanks for your help.”

Dirk’s headed out of your room the second he stops talking, but that doesn’t stop you from calling after him,

“Hey, layers are transguy culture, if I didn’t do it they’d revoke my membership; it’s a union thing.”

Dirk pointedly ignores you, and you hear his door shut a few seconds later, leaving you unacknowledged. You should probably start on that too, grabbing a pair of sweatshorts, your handstitched ugly t-shirt that you designed yourself, a black long sleeve with a print of small skulls on it, and your binder to complete your atrocious ensemble. Most of the time, you dress like a normal, dare you say stylish, teenage guy, it’s just not in the cards today. You head out into the living room to lace up your sneakers and wait until Dirk’s ready to go. Initially, these shoes were just standard red converse, but during middle school when you met Karkat, you two bonded by drawing out little comics on the rubber parts of the shoes. They’re not funny at all, but every time you see them you smile; it’s simply the cutest shit ever. Dirk stops dead once he walks out of his room and looks at you, he sounds exasperated,

“You look like a randomized Sim.”

You kinda do, but it’s still kind of a look, so you don’t take the time to go change. Instead, Dirk gets his shoes on and you both head to the car. You can tell that Dirk’s nervous about this interview because you have to call him on almost running two separate red lights on the way there. Dirk’s got this vice grip on the steering wheel and you’re just confused. Some nerves are to be expected, especially from Dirk when he’s in any situation. But potential car accident level of nerves? About an interview for a robotics startup? That strikes you as out of character for your brother.

“Dirk, are you sure you’re ok? You seem like, more nervous than normal.”

Dirk doesn’t respond for a minute or two, instead opting to stay quiet until he gets to the place and puts the car in park. After he takes a deep breath, he just lets out a torrent of words,

“Sorry, I must be freaking you out a bit, huh. There’s just someone who’s an employee here was friends with one of Bro’s friends, he might have even hung out with Bro before he went to prison. I hope that I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am and it’s fucking with my head.”

That makes your hair stand on end.

You want yourself and anyone you know to have neither jack nor shit to do with Bro or any of his associates, and you thought Dirk felt the same.

“Why the fuck would you even want this job then? It’s not like this is the only job in Houston, you can interview at other places.” You say.

“I have been. Dave, for the past two months, every week that you’ve been at your mom's, I’ve had at least two interviews a week and none of those places have called me back. I have enough money for things right now, but it’s all come from commissions and that’s not a steady income. I want you to have at least some stability in your life, you deserve that; and if money’s consistently inconsistent, then how’re you supposed to keep a stable house?”

Now you feel like an asshole. You had no idea how much Dirk was doing when you weren’t there, and with that context, you can understand why he’s feeling desperate.

“I’m sorry man I, I didn’t know how stressed you were about this.”

Dirk reaches out to touch your shoulder,

“Don’t apologize, you didn’t do anything wrong, you just didn’t know. While I’m doing the interview, you can go to the Barnes & Noble across down the street. I get the feeling that you don’t want to interact with anyone who might have been a friend of Bro’s.”

You nod in response to that, god just the thought makes you feel slimy.

“How long is your interview gonna be?” You ask.

“It’s gonna be longer than normal, make a dick joke and I’ll kill you, because they’re gonna have me do a practical portion, whatever that entails. So it’s almost 12 now, I’d guess we’d end at 1:30.”

“Goddamn, do they have to vet you? Are you sure you’re not joining some shady government project?”

Dirk chuckles at that,  
“I can assure you that I’m not. Anyways, I better get in there. Find me the most awfully drawn manga in the whole store if you get bored, and don’t go anywhere else. I’ll come to get you when I’m done ok?”

You nod at Dirk and raise one fist to him, which he promptly bumps.

“Ok, and you’re gonna kick ass, Dirk, you can do it I know you can.” You tell him, he thanks you and then turns to head into the building. You’re not sure what you were expecting, but it wasn’t this. This place looks like a retrofitted Italian restaurant that was actually a mob front but incidentally made bomb pizza too. You can’t see Dirk through the front windows anymore, so you head down the road to where the Barnes & Noble is so you can wait out the next hour and a half not roasting alive outside.

 ***** You wander around the store for a bit before you station yourself in front of the psychology section. Typically, this was more Rose’s speed but sometimes you like to look through the books about your own neurosis and make fun of yourself a bit. You find what you think is the perfect book for that, some beat up little 90's era comic about good touch/bad touch with clipart style drawings so shitty that you just have to pick it up. The color pallet of the thing makes it look like a post from 2011 Instagram and you keep on reading it. Quickly, the shitty clip art starts to look a bit too real but now you're in too deep. You don’t even notice that you’re panicking until you go to turn the next page and find it stuck to your fingers. You start to panic more and struggle with the book, eventually resulting in you tearing the page out entirely. When this happens, the store is silent and the telltale sound of ripping paper registers like a fighter jet, and everyone and their mother turns to look at you.

You don't even register their faces.

You don’t even care about them right now, right now you exist in a different time and you need to get the fuck outta dodge yesterday. There might be someone yelling at you as you sprint out of the store, you toss the book on the ground as best you can, but the cover sticks to you as well. You rationalize that they won’t have any reason to look for you if they get the book back, so you put the heel of your hand on the nearest corner, in this case, it’s the corner of a dumpster. You drag your palms across the width of the dumpster, prying off the book in the process. There’s still paper lingering on your hand, but this is the best you can do at the moment. You kick the book back towards the store where you see someone pick it up and take it back inside. You’re trying to ground yourself but nothing really looks familiar, nothing except for that building up the street, so that’s where you run.

It appears to be some kind of office/workshop type building, you appreciate that no one questions you barrelling in there and looking around for a bathroom. You have no idea where it is though, and it’s bringing your anxiety back up. You’re looking around when you swear you just suddenly know exactly where it is, you can’t explain it, but it’s a sense that you can’t ignore and you continue your dead sprint through this office. You reach their individual, thank god, bathroom in record time, and lock yourself in there. You stick to the door handle for a second, but at this point, your hands are sweating so much that you can unstick pretty easily. You run up to the sink, lifting the handle with your sleeved forearm and just holding your hands under the ice cold stream until your hands start to look purplish. After that, you try to stick your hands to the wall with no success and consider that a victory. You backslide down the wall until your sitting curled up with your head on your knees, bawling, with half frozen soaked hands, and haunting memories of committing petty theft. For a few minutes, you just exist in that state until you get startled as fuck by sudden, intense knocking on the door. When you don’t answer, the knocker starts speaking.

“Dave? Is that you in there? It’s Dirk, I thought I saw you running this way, please answer me.”

He sounds worried as fuck, and you want to calm him down and assure him that you’ll be ok, you’re just having another terrible brain moment, but you cannot physically form words right now. Instead, you scoot forward a bit until you can bat at the lock to get it unlocked, and once Dirk hears that click, he’s on you like white on rice. You kinda register him talking and then some other voices talking, and eventually, the other voices go away and it’s just you and Dirk. When you start taking longer, deeper breaths, he hands you a paper towel for your eyes and nose so you can feel a little less pathetically gross. He’s got his hands firmly on your shoulders and he’s looking right at you, sans shades. He speaks to you very softly,

“Hey Dave, keep breathing ok? Can you tell me what happened?”

You try to talk and at first you just cry a little more, but eventually, you can stutter out the word,

“Sticky”

Dirk goes from concerned to confused,

“I, I was all, all sticky. I, I couldn’t, couldn’t, I ripped the book up, it was stuck I.”

Dirk loops right back to being concerned, hushing you and trying to get you to your feet. He’s talking about a car, no, the car and you feel your legs moving a bit but not as much as you think they should be. That’s if they should be moving at all? You can’t say. You are, however, very sure of one thing;

This weird shit just won’t stop happening. *****  
__

Dirk manages to settle you in your bed where you fall asleep fully clothed, shoes and all. You wake up from that like an hour later because your binder’s starting to hurt. You change quickly into a t-shirt, sweats, and your purely ironic fluffy bunny slippers. Dirk must hear you shuffling around because he lightly knocks on the door soon after you start moving. You tell him that you’ll be a minute, he says that it’s fine, just come into the living room for a bit because he wants to make sure you’re ok. Before you fully walk out, you drape your plush throw blanket with little ghosts on it around you. You weren’t kidding about the layers thing. When you walk out, Dirk’s got some cold water, apple slices, and Oreos laying out on the little table in front of the couch. You go sit next to him, and you’re quiet for a bit until you grab an apple slice and lean against Dirk’s side.

“What happened back there, Dave?” Dirk all but whispers.

You shake your head,

“Fuck if I know, I was reading something that triggered me, and then it’s all a blur and now I’m here.”

“You said something about being sticky? And that the book was sticking to you and you ended up ripping it? Remember anything like that?” He asks gently.

Truth is, you remember the stuff that happened before you ended up locked in the office’s bathroom. But you can’t tell Dirk about all the weird shit about you, now that you know about how stressed he is you can’t add to it by being all, ‘By the way, you know those crazy scary superpeople dotted around the country? Yeah, that’s me now. Hope you don’t mind me going out and being in constant danger.’

Yeah, that’d go over well.

You know what you’re gonna have to do.

“I don’t remember saying anything about being sticky, I was probably just freaking out about how I like, got so fixed on the book that I couldn’t put it down, you know?”

Dirk nods at that, buying it.

“Ok. Be careful with what you read alright? Also, I’m gonna need you to take the rest of today and tomorrow easy, this took a lot out of you.”

“Karkat was gonna come over tomorrow tho, can he still?” You ask

“Yeah that’s still fine, just don’t have too much fun.” He teases you.

You laugh a bit and then stop, a wave of guilt hits you.

“I’m sorry. I must have embarrassed the hell out of you. I bet I nuked your chance of getting that job and I’m really sorry-”

Dirk cuts you off by raising one of his hands at you.

“I was actually just about to tell you that they decided to hire me right after the interview, said that I was the best candidate they’d had in weeks of interviews. So, there’s nothing to be sorry for, Dave.” He says with a small smile.

You feel a little warmer, knowing that your brother finally got some proper recognition for his skills and that you didn’t ruin it for him. You’re about to ask him when he starts but then a yawn hijacks your mouth.

“You should probably head to bed, I know it’s like 2:30 but I can wake you up to take your meds on time. With how much energy you’ve used today I think you’d be able to sleep an extra seven hours.”

Dirk says this like a suggestion, but you know from experience that this is what will be happening whether you agree or not. You oblige him, and head to bed, after taking a glass of water and some apple slices and Oreos on a napkin with you. Normally Dirk would warn you against eating something that can leave crumbs in the bed, but you think you’ve earned some bed Oreos for the day.  
__

Dirk was right. You do, in fact, sleep like you’re dead until the morning, only waking when Dirk had you take your meds. You feel better by the time you’re up on Sunday, but the one downside of sleeping for basically fifteen straight hours is that you’re so fucking hungry. You poke your head out the door and see that Dirk’s not out in the kitchen or living room. You whip out your phone, about to text him when you see he’s already texted you.

TT: Hey Dave, good morning. I left a note on the fridge too but this is just in case you didn’t see it. I meant to tell you yesterday, but my first day is actually today, so I’ll be back at around three. I know Karkat’s still coming over so don’t burn the building down and seriously, take it easy. Text me back when you see this, though I may not be able to respond immediately.

Oh. You think it’s a bit weird that Dirk had his interview on a Saturday and then started on that Sunday, you’d come to understand that those were days where office employees didn’t work. Oh well, maybe startup rules are different. You text him back and start living your absolute best life. 

Since Dirk isn’t here to stop you, you eat some Oreos, shredded cheese right out of the bag, and your antidepressants for breakfast. You and Karkat didn’t intend to do anything in particular, so there’s nothing to prepare except for making your room a bit less gross. You should also probably shower, you haven’t showered since Wednesday and a lot of sweating happened yesterday so you’re way overdue for one. You take a quick shower, get yourself dry, change into a different tshirt and sweats, and wrap your hair with a towel. You don’t care that your hair isn’t long enough to warrant this anymore, hair dryers make the worst noise and you don’t like the texture of getting your clothes wet.

You get the dishes out first, then go around and grab garbage, then finish by putting laundry in the hamper. It doesn’t take that long, so you’ve still got about an hour and a half to kill before Kat’s due to get here. You fuck with your hair for a bit, you’re trying to develop a haircare strategy that involves doing exactly nothing but still having nice, moisturized hair. You haven’t been successful yet, but that won’t stop you from trying.

Eventually, you get a text from Karkat,

CG: HEY, GOOD MORNING. I’M GONNA BE THERE LIKE 10 MINS LATE MAYBE? MY SIBLINGS ARE HAVING A FUCKING WAR IN THE LIVING ROOM AND I CANNOT GET AROUND THESE FUCKING ANIMALS.  
You wince on his behalf, Karkat has a genuinely stupid amount of siblings, seven in total with three caregivers bringing the house total to eleven. You go over sometimes but honestly, if you and Karkat hang out outside school it's your place or the restaurant. Those are the only places where you'll have a bit of actual alone time.

TG: i'd say good morning to you back but you're definitely not having one   
TG: but no its chill, i will be here, waiting for you with bated breath babe oh and also dirk ain't here, but he's gonna be back at like 3 ish but he’s not exactly sure, just an fyi   
TG: the 'the more you know' rainbow shooting star thing flies by at breakneck speed, leaving no survivors   
TG: uh oh karkat are you there?  
TG: oh no are you another civilian casualty in this war? goddamn, it gets more brutal every day   
CG: NOT A CASUALTY, BUT I CAME VERY CLOSE. DID YOU KNOW NEPETA CAN HOLD A WHISTLE NOTE LONG ENOUGH TO *SHATTER GLASS* BECAUSE SHE CAN. MY FUCKING GOD SHE CAN.   
TG: omg really?   
TG: tell her she needs to teach me   
CG: NO. NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE. YOU CAN’T BE TRUSTED WITH A POWER LIKE THAT. I LOVE YOU, BUT AN EVIL LIKE THAT CAN NEVER BE RELEASED ONTO THE EARTH.   
TG: as we all know, i am one of the horsemen   
CG: YOU’RE NOT *ONE* OF THE HORSEMEN, YOU’RE *ALL* OF THE HORSEMEN.   
TG: rude, we all know i’m plague you can’t take that from me   
CG: I AM LITERALLY IN THE ELEVATOR HEADING TO YOUR FLOOR, BUT SO HELP ME GOD I WILL TURN THE FUCK AROUND AND NEVER RETURN.   
TG: :c   
CG: I’M KIDDING.   
CG: ALSO, COME OPEN THE DOOR.   
You spring up from your spot on the couch and walk up to the door,

“What’s the password!” You shout through the door.

“Dave I will never cook for you again if you don’t open this mother fucking door in the next two seconds.” Karkat shouts right back.

For the record, you scramble to unlock and open the door and manage to get it done in about a second in a half. Despite all the antagonizing the two of you had done to each other today alone, you both reach out for a hug while standing in the doorway. You pull Karkat in entirely and he shuts and locks the door. Once you’re out of anyone's potential view, you kiss him on the lips softly.

“Hi.” You say,

“Hi.” Kat responds while fiddling with your hair a little bit, still kinda holding onto you.

After a second, he steps back a little bit and looks at you kinda concerned.

“Dirk told me that you weren’t doing too good yesterday, do you feel ok now? Do you want me to fuck off so you can rest? Because if you do it’s fine.”

He’s worried and it kinda hurts your heart.

“Kitty no, I want you here. And yeah, I’m feeling fine right now, I just slept for like fifteen hours like how can you not be ok after that?”

You’re trying anything to get him to not ask about what happened, but Karkat is Karkat, so ask about what happened is exactly what he does.

** “ Ok, Cliff Notes version: I read a book that triggered me real bad and I lowkey destroyed it and then kinda accidentally stole it but I threw it on the ground while I was running so like I don’t still have it or anything and I panicked so much that I ran into the only other familiar building, which was the office Dirk was interviewing at. He saw me being all frantic and shit and then he basically had to drag my lifeless body back here and then I slept for fifteen hours and now you’re here.” **

You kinda tried to talk fast so some would be lost on him because a lot happened and you don't want him to worry, but regardless of your talking speed he looks shocked.

“My fucking god I thought you had a fever or something. Bunny, I’m so sorry that happened. Do you wanna talk about it?”

He’s using his mushy nickname for you like you used his earlier. That and the genuine sadness on his face makes you almost want to tell him everything. Everything, everything, like the entire past decade’s worth of everything. You stop yourself tho, that’s not something anyone can handle hearing all at once. You’ll tell him everything one day, but gradually, as you heal. You look back up to meet his eye and shake your head. He nods, then asks if you want to watch a movie.

“Hell fucking yes I wanna watch a movie. Can we watch Cool Cat Saves the Kids? It’s a cinematic masterpiece and I don’t think I've made you watch it yet.”

Karkat looks physically pained as he lets you put on this absolute clusterfuck of a movie without a fight. Silver linings of having a massive panic attack, you guess. You two sit on the couch and eat snacks, and watch/make fun of a few movies, with only two or three kiss breaks. At one point, you try to get up to use the bathroom during a movie that’s honestly kinda giving you the heebie jeebies a bit, but when you try to unclasp your hand from Karkat’s, you realize that you can’t. You get his attention,

“Hey, look I know you don’t want me to leave even for a second but I promise I am an efficient pisser I’ll be right back so can you let go of my hand?”

He also tries to get his hand off of yours, but even with both of you struggling, they’re not budging.

What the absolute fuck, how does this happen twice?

It’s still a first for Karkat tho, so he is losing his fucking mind.

“DAVE oh my GOD what’s HAPPENING how do we unstick WH- I know! I know what we need!”

Before you can get a word in, Karkat drags your scrawny ass to the kitchen and starts tearing through your pantry, before finally stopping and pulling out a bottle of canola oil. You need to stop this before it happens,

“Karkat, hey I think that water’s gonna work just fine and that we don’t need to bother making a mess with the oil. Let’s at least try water ok?”

Karkat just looks at you, his face twisted with a look of panicked disbelief. He doesn’t even bother to say anything before he flicks the spout open and douses your hands, and the kitchen, in canola oil. He starts tugging at your hands again, but to no avail. You’ve gotta get him over to the sink, luckily with the oil on the floor, you can just slide there and drag Karkat along for the ride. You’re calming down from the shock of this happening again and you flick on the cold water. As your pulse drops and your breathing gets slower, you feel it happen. Your hand starts to feel like tape that’s lost its stick and Karkat’s able to tear his hand away. You look just as shocked as him, but for a different reason. You think you’ve figured it out, it was only when you calmed down that you were able to get unstuck, you don't think it was aided by the oil or the water, either. It becomes simple now; scared is to sticky and unsticky is to relaxed. You’ve been in your head too long and you’re missing the part of the rant that Karkat is directing at you.

“- are you so FUCKING CALM about this!! WE JUST WATCHED PHYSICS BREAK, DAVE!”

“Yeah. Yeah we did. Can we agree to not tell anyone though?”

Karkat looks at you like you just asked to add his bones to your collection.

“Not? Tell? Anyone? We should fucking, fucking tell NASA, tell your siblings at least I mean, isn’t Roxy a psychics major? Isn’t Dirk in mechanical engineering? They might be able to explain this and if they can’t explain it then they should know about it EVEN MORE!”

Is Karkat right?

Yes.

But can you risk actually doing that?

Under no circumstance.

“Kat, no. Please. Look, after my thing yesterday I think Dirk’ll think I had like a tactile hallucination or something and he might want me to get re-evaluated. He’s been under a lot of stress too and I don’t know how he’d react to this or if he’d even believe us. Please Karkat, let’s just get everything cleaned up and keep this to ourselves. Please.”

You’re begging at this point and the look on Karkat’s face as you talk makes you feel like such a shitty boyfriend. You’re not lying, per se, you’re also concerned about all the other things you mentioned, but none of them are the primary reason. Karkat responds by grabbing some paper towels and starting to soak up the oil on the floor, while you get busy soaking up all the oil on the counter. You get another one of those strong feelings, the same kind that guided you through the office yesterday, but this time it says; _hurry up_. You look at the clock; 3:09

You kick it into high gear, and Karkat doesn’t ask questions; he just buckles down and scrambles to match your speed. By the time you get all the oily paper towels into the trash and shift everything around so that they’re a bit hidden under all the other stuff, it’s 3:12.

You realize the kitchen still smells like cooking oil, so you grab a bag of microwave popcorn and hope that the butter scent will mask the smell. You and Karkat just hang in the kitchen waiting for the popcorn, but before it’s ready, you hear the door unlock and swing open. Dirk sees you both upon entering and greets you both.

“How was your first day?”

You ask before Dirk gets the opportunity to say anything. You’re genuinely curious about how he feels, but you also don’t want him to focus on the oil smell and sloshes and wet patches all over your and Karkat’s clothes.

“Yeah, it went great. Just kinda learning the ropes for now, but I think I’ll like it there.”

“Fuck yeah bro! Congrats, seriously.” You respond, almost too cheerily.

You’re really happy that Dirk’s found a job that he likes and that pays well, and hopefully, that’ll lift some stress off him. The microwave goes off and Karkat grabs the popcorn out. Dirk grabs a handful and then tells you that he’s gonna go take a shower, he turns to Karkat,

“Karkat, are you gonna be here when I get out?”

Karkat turns and looks at the clock on the microwave and shakes his head.

“No, I was gonna leave at 3:30 so I’d have enough time to help with prep work in the kitchen and get ready to host tonight.”

Kat’s been so excited for tonight, he’ll actually get to stay for full dinner service, from prep to the end of the cleanup.

“Well, in that case, good luck, and be safe on your way home. Dave, think about what you want for dinner. See you in a bit.”

With that, Dirk walks into his room and shuts the door behind him and once he does you and Karkat both let out a relieved breath.

“Good job on not cracking, Kat.” You say.

“Dave, he’s gonna find out, and then he’s gonna like, I dunno garotte or some shit that guy has threatened me more than once and I think he’d fucking do it!”

He’s whisper-yelling in his mind, but he’s actually just yelling-yelling. Luckily you hear the water running, so Dirk wouldn’t be able to hear it regardless.

“I wouldn’t let him actually garrote you.” You tell him sincerely.

“You’re a true romantic, Dave Strider.”

He says this deadpan, but cracks when you give him a peck on the cheek. Karkat tells you he’s gonna head out now, and you wish him luck and watch him walk away until he’s out of view.

Now that you’re basically alone, you come down from your adrenaline high a little bit more. You can’t remember the last time you lied to Dirk, and you’ve never lied to Dirk and gotten away with it. You rationalize that you really didn’t lie, you just omitted some of the truth, so it’s not the same thing.  
You still don’t know why this is happening or how this started, but you know that now, you can stick to things, your eyes aren’t as sensitive, you have immaculate intuition, and you’re hungry as fuck all the time. WebMD tells you that you have mad cow disease, but you’re getting the sinking feeling that you’re not sick with anything; that this is just who you are.

If this is who you are now, then what are you meant to do with it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all though this was gonna be a fun spiderman au? nope. dave is a character i project trauma onto so there's gonna be something like this in most in depth things i write> i wrote this whole chapter in one six hour sitting after i wrote something a bit happier for another one of my aus (which you should totally read by the way, its a historical royalty au, the good faith series) i want to thank all of you for reading again, i have never made any art that has gotten the amount of praise and attention that this has in such a short time span and it really means a lot to me, i was not expecting much of anything to come from this. there probably wont be any updates this week bc thats finals week for me (and also my whole state is deciding to nuke itself and its stressful as fuck to watch) but next week i'll get chapter 3 up! and its gonna be exciting! <3
> 
> edit: i got a bit antsy a few hours after posting this and did some minor editing to make things a bit less, Loud. plot is still all the same tho. the tw has been changed a bit to reflect that.


	3. what's up danger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> light TW in place for this chapter! physical abuse is mentioned towards the end and it will be marked with asterisks (*) at the start and end! srry for the delay! no one has beta'd the finished version so theres probably typos srry for that too

There’s no sleeping for you tonight, regardless of the dosage of your meds. Normally, you take 25mg a night and that does you in, but tonight you had to go up to 100mg just to get a little tired, but you still can’t sleep. You spend all your time awake just thinking about why this is happening, why it’s happening to _you_ specifically, and what you can even do about it. You didn’t realize how much of a burden that hiding something like this would be. It makes you feel guilty; like you’re taking everyone's’ love and help and support and just spitting on it.

Eventually, you get too antsy to keep laying in bed, so you get up and stand at your window, looking out at your hometown at night. Houston’s a major city, yeah, but not in the way that other places are. There aren’t too many cars or people out or anything like that, so you’re mainly just staring at the skyline and counting all the windows on the skyscrapers. You check the time, 2:30 AM. It’s been thirteen hours since your episode. You haven’t thought much about the contents of the episode, it’s not anything you haven't been through before.

What you are thinking about, however, is the mechanics of your flypaper hands. You’re like, 95% sure that it’s an elevated heart rate that triggers it, regardless of the seriousness of whatever's freaking you out. You decide to do a bit of an experiment.

You’re gonna see if you can hang from the ceiling.

You climb up onto the kinda shitty Ikea desk that's put together kinda wrong but you’re still about a heads length away from being able to put your palms flat on the ceiling. You’re looking around for something to give yourself that needed boost. Maybe the textbooks that’ve been breaking your back for the entirety of your high school career could finally be of use. You stack them up, Geometry goes on the bottom, because you can do math passibly, even when the alphabet gets involved; but who the fuck invited all these motherfucking shapes? Chemistry goes next, it’s a subject that’s honestly interesting and one that you’re not that bad at, but your teacher’s an annoying jackass and those fucking stools you have to sit on are literally instruments of torture. English is next, you’re not anti-English class, but your teacher's last name is Place, but you can’t call her "Ms. Place", because she has a doctorate. It’s just such a missed opportunity and it stings.

At this point, you’re just a hair away from the ceiling, so you have to make the decision between your Spanish to English dictionary, or your book for AP World. Both have pros and cons, your Spanish teacher might be batshit but she’s funny as fuck and never makes you play ‘geography roulette’ but on the other hand, what other class are you going to be able to have a moment where you can publically die on your hill of ‘humanity would have been better off overall had the Persians won the Persian War and not the Greeks, even though it would mean snuffing out their sad excuse for a “democracy” and therefore potentially killing democracy as a concept entirely.’ Maybe it’s unpopular but goddamnit you’re right.

Spanish to English dictionary it is.

Plus your AP World book is rented so if you damage that by standing on it there’s gonna be hell and $80 to pay. You push all the books stacked on top of each other up against the wall for some added stability and situate yourself standing on top of the book pile. You can comfortably touch your palms to the ceiling now, and now you’ve gotta figure out how to get your heart rate up enough to trigger the sticky. At first, you just start breathing really fast, but it just makes you lightheaded. It’s when you're in this floaty state that you consider just finding something to trigger a panic attack, it seemed to work earlier. That’s actually an awful idea, and you shake your head a bit to make sure it gets out of your head. When you shake your head just a little too hard to one side, you finally get your elevated heart rate.

One of your feet moves involuntarily to keep yourself steady and then the whole book pile folds like a goddamn accordion. You gasp and brace yourself, expecting to break your whole face, but you don’t. You untense a bit and open your eyes slowly, seeing a few books just chilling on the floor while you hang a few feet above them. You look up to see your hands laid flat on the ceiling, holding up your entire body weight. Now that you’ve got the sticky here, you’ve gotta figure out how it ticks. Your first task is gonna be moving around. It takes a few tries, but once you concentrate hard enough on it, you manage to take one of your hands off entirely and then move yourself straight forward a bit. It’s not a lot, but you guess that everyone’s gotta start somewhere. You spend your whole night experimenting with your sticking-power, you discover that it’s not just your hands, it’s your whole body that can stick if you want it to. Well, not your whole body, areas with dense hair won’t hold you, so when you tried to wear your ceiling as a kippah, you ate shit for it.

Eventually, the sun starts to rise and with that, you hear Dirk start to get up. At this point, you’d crawled up the wall to the ceiling and kinda nailed the whole ‘walking on your palms’ thing. You know now that you’ve gotta quiet down, and that it’s probably best if you make your way down and call it a night. It’s when you start to hear him walk towards your room that you realize that you’re not gonna have the luxury of a calm descent, there’s nothing else on this side of the apartment aside from your room, so you know he’s coming to your room to check on you or something. You put one hand forward, towards your bed, you’ve got a plan but you have to act fast. You estimate that three wide hand steps will get you in the drop zone to land on your bed, and as Dirk’s footsteps get ever closer, you kick it into high gear and swing hand to hand like your life depends on it. The sound of a hand touching metal alerts you that Dirk is literally outside your door about to walk in and see you hanging from the ceiling like a sticky jackass, so you’ve gotta shoot your shot. You’re not as close as you wanted to be, but beggars and choosers and all that, you swing your legs a little bit to build up momentum and once you’ve got enough, you unstick yourself from the ceiling and launch yourself onto your bed, landing face-first on your armada of pillows. You briefly make fun of Karkat in your head for saying that you have too many pillows. Ha, who has insufficient spatial management now, bitch. You’re able to get your lower half a little under your blanket and close your eyes the second before you see the very soft light of the kitchen flood into your room. The noise obviously startled Dirk, because hear him gasp. Presumably, it’s because of the amount of noise that you made by catapulting yourself onto what is perhaps the squeakiest bed in all of existence. Maybe the bed frame looks like it belongs to a wistful forest prince, but jeez you can’t even throw your phone on the bed without it screeching at you, so yea the noise you made when you landed was horrifically loud. You channel all the one year of middle school theatre and one and a half years of high school tech theatre and play comatose. Dirk walks towards you slowly, probably searching for an intruder who wouldn’t know how loud the bed is, and less at you. When he doesn’t spot anyone, he mutters a very soft,

“What the fuck was that?” 

You leave him unanswered. After a few more seconds, he leaves the room and you get to let out the breath you didn’t know you were holding. That was a close one. A really really close one.

___

You spend the next hour and a half just kinda laying around with your eyes closed, waiting for your alarm to sound. Despite running on no sleep, when you get up and go to brush your teeth, you realize that you don’t really feel that tired. You do, however, feel the familiar ache of hunger. You head into the kitchen, to be greeted by Dirk, who seems to be more anxious than normal. “Good morning Di-” is all you can get out before he’s verbally steamrolling you.

“There was a massive crashing noise coming from your room last night, it was a little metallic and I’m pretty sure all our neighbors heard it. Are you alright? Do you know what that was?”

_shit shit shit shit shit shit_

“Oh I um, was, was that a real noise? I thought I had dreamt it. I mean, even if I knew it was a real noise I would have no idea what could have made a noise like that. I mean who knows, y’know with my bedframe I could have just breathed in the wrong direction and it would break the sound barrier.”

That has to be the most pathetic excuse for a lie you’ve ever stammered out. You average good lying skills, but you’re still no good at lying to people who know you well, especially when you have to lie on the spot. One of Dirk's eyebrows raises, confirming that he’s skeptical as hell about everything you just said.

“Ok then. Well, I guess as long as you’re alright then I guess it doesn’t really matter what made the noise.” He says, incredulous as all hell.

You mutter some nonsense about getting breakfast and focus intently on the process of making cereal. You can feel Dirk looking at you and you know that if you don’t say something now, he’ll wait to ask again after your therapy when you're too drained to keep your story straight. Now that you’ve had time to think it over though, you think you’ve thought up something that’ll convince him. You sigh, maybe a bit too dramatically,

“Ok, fine. I do know what made the noise.”

Dirk raises both eyebrows now, urging you to go on.

“It was me. I forgot to take my meds and I got so antsy just laying there and then I tried to do some pacing to get it out but that made it worse so I took it up a notch and tried to perfect my shitty back handspring with my bed as my crashmat and I totally ate shit. Are you happy now?”

You put your hands on your hips as punctuation and when you look directly at Dirk to gauge his reaction, he’s moved a hand over his mouth to stifle his laughter at your expense. You know you’ve got him now, you just have to stick the landing. You act as though you’ve never been so insulted in all your life, and stomp off to eat your, now kinda soggy, cereal on the couch away from Dirk. He follows you though, having had his laugh.

“Ok, I get why you pretended not to know what made the sound, I’m almost proud of how bad that back handspring must have been to make that kind of noise.”

You flip him off, being preoccupied with a mouthful of Honey Bunches of Oats, interspersed with your morning meds.

“Alright, alright, I’ll drop it. Speaking of dropping, would you be ok with me just dropping you off back here once you're done with your session after school? I’m going into work to cover for someone.”

You nod, you’ll be fine on your own. Though, it’s a bit unusual to have this much alone time when you’re staying with Dirk. You don’t feel lonely per se, but it’s definitely new.

“They must really like you, to have you coming in to cover someone for your second shift.”

When you say that, Dirk flinches like he just got got by a shitty jumpscare.

“Uh, yea. Yea I guess they do. You better start getting ready for school now, or you’re gonna be late.”

Dirk says hurriedly, then he shoots off like a bat out of hell.

What the fuck?

Ok, now you’re sure of two things; Weird shit just won’t stop happening, and you’re not the only person in this house keeping secrets.

__

Dirk drives you to school like normal, but the whole ride there feels off. It’s quieter than normal, and that sticks with you as you continue your morning. On any normal day, you’d meet Karkat, John, Rose, and Jade and whoever else from your network of friends who decided to show up in the fine arts hall to kill time together before first period. You drag your feet a bit while walking to the hall, it’s not really a normal day, is it? No.

No, it hasn’t been a normal day in a few days. At least, that’s what you tell yourself as you pass by the entrance to the fine arts hall and go straight into the auditorium instead. You’re a slightly prominent techie, so no one who’s in the auditorium for whatever reason isn’t suspicious as to why you’re there. You allow yourself the tiniest smirk; because they absolutely should be. You walk up the side stairs and through the wings of the theatre, you can’t help but notice that the tape for the background on stage right is inexplicably gone. You’ll try to remember to fix that before you leave, make yourself look busy. What you’re really here for is the dressing room. You’re gonna have a better chance of finding what you need in the girls' dressing room, so you scan for witnesses, see no one, and then knock on the door.

No answer; perfect.

You push the door open slowly, like you would if there was a show going on. You don’t want to attract any attention. Once you’ve opened the door just enough to squeeze yourself through, you quickly shut the door and lock it. You also put the only chair in the whole dressing room in front of the door, just to feel a little more secure. You’re not really sure why you’re freaking out about this so much. It’s not like you’ve never been in the girls dressing room before, you’ve been in both dressing rooms to help tape down mics, look for actors for scenes and look to find the motherfucker who’s whole conversation about how they snuck margaritas for the entire cast into the building is being projected to the audience in the middle of a number because they’re too stupid to remember that their mic’s on.

You start rummaging through the lost and found and find plenty of standard dance clothes, tights, leggings, extra jazz shoes, etc. until you finally find what you’re looking for. It’s a long sleeve deep red leotard with thumbholes and a really high neck. You rummage a bit more to find one of those pairs of black leggings with the strap that goes under the foot. You fold your items quickly, then push them down to the bottom of your backpack. You go to pull out your phone and check the time, but that omnipotent intuition butts in before you can;

_It’s 7:56, you have four minutes to get to class._

You almost look at the phone in your hand to double-check, but so far that intuition hasn’t led you astray, and if you’re gonna do any kind of good with this, you’re gonna have to start not constantly second-guessing yourself. You stealthily make your way out of the greenroom and out of the, now empty, auditorium. You get to start your day off bright and early with geometry, which is always a treat. It’s your second period though, that you’re actually looking forward to. Not for anything you’ll be learning and not even for the company, but because every Monday is the day that your second period chemistry class has lab day, and you’ve got this idea buzzing in your head that you at least need to try. You do this awkward kinda walk, kinda jog fast walk up the stairs and down the hall to geometry, and you walk into class with a minute to spare. Something unexpected happens when you walk into class and take your seat though.

Someone takes the little eraser off their pencil and hits you right on the mouth with it. Your intuition has decided to peace out for the time being, so that means you startle into the next county and give your classmates a nice chuckle. You look around for the fucker who threw that and lock eyes with Jade, who has her pencil in one hand, and her other hand covering her agape mouth. She gives you a weak little wave and smile, mouthing the word ‘sorry’ at you.

You’re gonna wager that she threw the eraser.

This now presents a whole other problem; you have all your classes today, and at least one member of your friend group is in every single one of your classes, except for theatre that is. You decide to actually sit at the vacant desk next to Jade, knowing your teacher doesn’t give a shit about anything. Before your ass is even fully touching the seat, Jade is lightly grabbing your wrist with her hands to get your attention, quietly saying how sorry she is for hitting you with the eraser.

“Jade, Ms. Motorcycle, you’re fine. In fact, you’re actually allowed to hit me in the face with an eraser two more times this month, in fact with this special TV offer, I’ll even throw in an extra hit. That’s four total eraser hits for the price of three, call 1-800-SIX-NINE to claim your offer but hurry, supplies are limited.”

When you finish whatever the fuck that was, Jade looks like she’s changed her mind and isn’t that sorry, actually.

“God Dave, I really don’t know how you come up with some of the stuff you say. And it’s a good thing that I have three more hits because you skipped out on squad time this morning! Were you feeling alright? Even Karkat and Rose weren’t sure why you weren’t there. Were you late or something?”

She asks this with such genuine concern that you almost just tell her everything, but you manage to instead give her another half-truth,

“Oh no I wasn’t late, I just had some last minute techie shit to do this morning, and I forgot about it so I didn’t tell Rose or Kat.”

Jade nods, accepting this and turning her attention to the board to copy down the workbook pages that’ll be due on Friday. You try to write it down too, but you’re hit with sudden spaciness and find that you only can concentrate long enough to scribble down half the numbers and nothing else. You recognize this feeling, it’s the feeling you get when you forget about your meds, but you had them, you remember that because you swallowed them with the milk from your cereal instead of with a shot of five hour energy. _Great_ , you think, _now my meds aren’t working on top of me morphing into this half man, half spider thing_. You had deduced that it was the spider bite that did this, there’s just no way that a spider that weird looking could bite you and then almost immediately after, all this weird shit starts happening and that it's just a coincidence.

Class begins as normal and boring as ever, and you just count the seconds until you can finally get to test your theory. You pull out your sketchbook; boredom is the perfect brainstorming emotion, after all. It’s a neglected little thing, when you got seriously involved with the theatre program, you stopped drawing as much as you used to. Luckily, you hadn’t stopped long enough that you’d forgotten how to do it. There are about twelve new pages, each with a few doodles and sketches of a disguise for yourself. You don’t necessarily think you’re a hero, in fact, you know you’re never gonna be a hero for anyone, but that doesn’t mean you’re gonna go around dressed in jeans and your boyfriends’ hoodie. You really like your most recent sketch, a full body suit and mask, it’s mostly red up top, with a spider web pattern on the arms and a section of black going vertical over your middle, with a red spider symbol on the chest. There are a few stripes of blue and green on the midsection; an homage to the arachnid motherfucker who got you into this situation. But the most tribute to him is on the legs. For that, you have the black leggings and black jazz shoes at home. You’re gonna add a blue spider web pattern on one leg, with a green one on the other. You’re glad that you already have the appropriate paints to do this with, or else you’d have to ask Dirk to take you to the store and you’d have to come up with yet another lie. Granted, you don’t know exactly how you’re gonna make the mask yet, so maybe you will have to acquire some more material. You keep pondering your disguise until the bell signaling the end of first period rings, then you promptly gather your shit, bid a hasty goodbye to Jade, and book it to your chemistry class.

You’re one of the first students there, you grab your notebook and sketchbook out of your bag and head for your table. You have to leave your bag upfront during lab days. Karkat is in this class with you, but he’s not here yet. You're arranged alphabetically in this class, and since S and V are relatively close to each other in the alphabet, you and Karkat get to sit next to each other and be lab partners. The little table you two share is off in the very back corner, and it’s the only one to not have a table next to it, so you’re not gonna have to hide what you’re doing as much. You start by arranging some extra beakers in the drawer that’s part of your lab table, during your restless night, you thought about your sticky hands, and about how it would be so convenient if you didn’t have to touch something to stick to it; if you could just swing from building to building on a web, just like your namesake.

You’re not a chemistry prodigy by any means, but you think you’ve got an idea on how to make that a reality. You know how weird you must look, so you’re tossing things together at lightspeed, at least, that’s what you’re doing until you notice a shadow covering you.

“Dave, what the fuck are you doing?”

It seems that you got so engrossed in your frantic reenactment of Breaking Bad that you didn’t realize that Karkat had come in and taken his seat next to you. His not so sudden, sudden presence makes you jump and you knock two beakers over in the drawer because of it.

“Oh shit sorry, are you alright? Do you need to go wash your hands?”

Karkat asks, now sounding concerned.

“Yeah, no I’m fine yeah don’t worry about it dude I’m right as rain, happy as a clam, snug as a bug that’s fine as hell, and has zero chemical burns.”

You let your mouth run as you watch the reaction between the two chemicals, witnessing them bubble and coagulate into some kind of paste. You grab your pencil from your notebook and poke at the blob. In turn, the blob sticks to the pencil, and when you pull it back it refuses to let go fully and it stretches to accommodate. It’s hard to describe what it looks like, it doesn’t just look like a regular string it looks more like a very fine thread, almost like a spiderweb.

As the old adage says; if it walks like a spiderweb and talks like a spiderweb, then it probably is a spiderweb.

You take a quick survey of your surroundings, you’ve somehow managed to not attract the attention of your classmates and you can’t really tell if it’s because everyone cares so little about what you’re doing or if that all just have Airpods in. It’s probably a bit of both. You direct your attention back at your boyfriend, whose furrowed brow is demanding an explanation as to why you’ve been so weird lately right-the-fuck-now.

“Kat, I can explain.”

“You better.”

Is his short response.

“Ok so, I’ve been trying to recreate whatever made our hands stick together, and I think that you might have just done it I mean, fucking look at what it was doin’ to my pencil! That bitch is stuck on like gum in a parking lot that someone spat out ten years ago and no one picked up, so it’s just a decade old piece of juicy fruit that’s been stepped on and ran over a billion times and has baked itself into the asphalt. That shit’s never coming off, make all the minimum wage employees scrub from dawn to dusk, you can’t get rid of her. No one can.”

That one even got away from you for a bit, so it’s no surprise that Karkat no longer looks concerned and now has a very vulnerable, hurt expression on his face.

“You know I can tell when you’re lying, right?”

All the words you want to say are stuck in your throat, and it feels so real that you have to focus on actually breathing for a second. Karkat takes your silence as an invitation to continue,

“I thought we agreed that we didn’t want to keep secrets from each other, Dave you’ve been freaking me and everybody else the fuck out like, all weekend.”

“I’m sorry I, I didn’t realize that you know my tells I didn’t mean to-”

“Hold the fuck on. THAT’S what you’re sorry about? You’re sorry that I can TELL YOU’RE LYING? Not that you’re SORRY FOR LYING TO ME? THAT’S THE ONLY PART YOU’RE SORRY ABOUT?”

Karkat is yelling, and he’s yelling by Karkat standards, which means that by normal standards he sounds like a fighter jet. You’re captivated by the genuine anger and hurt in his eyes. It’s not something you’ve seen since you started dating, and it’s never something you’ve seen directed at you.

“Karkat no I just mean that, that I’m sorry for lying yeah but I’m also sorry that I’m not better at it. I never wanted you to worry.”

You take a deep breath, fully intending to continue speaking before your teacher clearing his throat and barking at you both,

“Could you two please take your couples therapy outside? I’m trying to set up a lab here.”

You notice now that class has technically started, and that everyone’s eyes are directed at you and Karkat, you look up at him to see his dark skin basically glowing red from embarrassment before he just gets up and walks out of the room. You’re frozen for a second before your teacher makes a ‘get the fuck out’ gesture at you with his thumb. You gather the blob into one of the built-in folders on your notebook and shut the drawer, then grab your backpack and run out of the room after Karkat, cheeks burning the whole time. You’re kinda pale, so you’re sure your entire face is fire engine red and it’ll stay like that for a while. But you don’t have time to be concerned with that, you gotta find Karkat and you’ve gotta find him now. You can’t stand the fact that he’s feeling hurt by you, the only problem is that you have no idea what direction he went. You wait for a second, fully intending to rely on that intuition but it’s not presenting right now. Panic fills you for a second, you’re catastrophizing about losing Karkat and how he’s never gonna speak to you again until you realize something.

You don’t need this special intuition to know where Karkat is, you're still yourself, and, you know him too well to have to rely on that.

It’s right after you realize that, that you turn around and head for the south staircase because you know exactly where Karkat went. At some point, you legitimately start sprinting, and you take a moment to appreciate that you seem to be faster than normal now. The south staircase is a special one, first because it’s different from all the other outdoor staircases, it’s a semi-spiral and it attaches to this kinda gorgeous terrace that’s never utilized. Second, because this is where you and Karkat had your first kiss.

You stealth mode past the few classrooms right by the door out onto the terrace, you push the door open slowly; not really expecting him on the terrace, but you still don’t want to scare him or anything. Once you open the door, you’re proven right, there’s no Karkat in sight. Now you know exactly where he is, you march for the stairs and wind your way down them, jumping off one stair early and then going to the underside of the staircase. That’s where the kiss happened, and that’s where you find him, sitting down hugging his knees to his chest, head hanging low. He looks up a bit when he hears you, but once he notices it’s you he looks right back down. You take your shades off and clip them onto the neck of your shirt.

“Karkat, I’m really sorry. For lying, for hurting you, and for sounding like a jackass the first time I tried to apologize.”

He sniffs and looks up at you with _‘I’ve been crying'_ eyes and it just breaks your goddamn heart. Those eyes soften a bit and you take that as an invitation to take a seat at his side. His hands are grabbing for you the second you sit down and you let yourself grab onto him too, and just hold him, and be held by him. You two scarcely have actual fights, and they take emotional tolls on both of you. Karkat loosens his grip a bit and wipes his eyes with his sleeve, looking at you. Seeing him cry makes you start to tear up too, you can’t help it, you're a mirror crier. Once he sees that, he laughs a little bit, which makes you laugh too which then makes you cry harder.

“You have therapy today, right?”

Karkat asks suddenly.

“Psychiatrist, actually but yeah, Dirk’s picking me up, dropping me off, picking me up again, then dropping me off at the apartment so he can go to work to cover for someone.”

Karkat hums thoughtfully, then takes both your hands and looks you in the eye.

“Are you going to talk to her about whatever’s making you act so weird?”

He sounds almost desperate for you to say yes, you want to tell him yes, but you can’t lie to him again.

“Not today. Once I can like, put it into words and make sense of it all, then I’ll tell her. And I’ll tell you, and Rose, and Dirk, and John, Jade, your dad whoever wants to know.”

You smile at him at the end, hoping to soothe his nerves a bit more, but he’s got an unhappy look on his face, and he’s not letting go of your hands.

“Kitty, hey. Do you still trust me?”

“Of course I do, I just don’t want you to get hurt because you go off and do something solo again, Dave, you don’t have to do things solo anymore.”

You can feel the tears wanting to start up again, so you lean forward and bury your face in his shoulder.

“I know, and I promise this is different, but I can’t tell you. Not yet.”

He says nothing, but his grip on you tightens.

“I promise Kat, I’m not going to get hurt and I just need time to figure out exactly what’s happening to me. I’m the only one involved, no one’s gonna hurt me or anything.”

“It’s when you hurt yourself that’s the scariest.”

Karkat mutters into your hair.

“This isn’t like that. I promise.”

You dislodge your head from his shoulder and see that he’s crying a bit again too. You put your hands on either side of his face and bring him in for a kiss. Once you two break apart, you put your forehead on his, and promise him one more time that you’re gonna be ok, and that you’ll tell him later. He whispers back to you, barely audible;

“I trust you.”

__

The rest of the day goes by uneventfully. The rest of this week better go uneventfully with how bonkers your morning was, but you’re getting this feeling that this week isn’t done with you yet. Now you’re sitting on the curb by the front of the school waiting for Dirk to pick you up to take you to therapy. You’re just zoning out to pass the time when you hear a group of footsteps come out the door and stand all clustered together. Normally, you’d just go back to staring a hole into nothing, but something is telling you to listen to them. The only problem is that they’re like ten feet away, whispering, and there are about thirty cars idling all around you. You still feel like you have to listen to them though, so you take a deep breath, close your eyes, and concentrate as best you can on that group. It’s all sounding distorted like normal until they start to reverse fade in and drown out everything else like you were standing right next to them.

_“-don’t be a pussy, Michael. Trust me, it’ll be easy cash.”_

_“I’m not being a pussy dude, there’s like no actual plan for this, what if we get caught do you know what my dad would do to me if I got fucking arrested for breaking and entering or some shit?”_

_“No, you’re freaking out for no reason, Eric is right. This’ll be easy money and if you’re too scared to actually help, then you can just walk home right now.”_

_“Ok ok I- I’ll still help just, can we go over the plan again or something?”_

_“Alright, fine. The three of us, plus Carlos and Jameson all meet up at my place Thursday night at 8:00 for a ‘study group’. Once we chill upstairs for like an hour, we sneak out the backdoor and take the bus B downtown. There’s this old crazy meth-head lady that lives in the condemned 7/11 on the corner of I-20 and Wallace. Rumor has it, that she’s got a massive stash of any drug you can think of. We go there with empty backpacks, come back with hundreds of bucks worth of drugs. Dude, think about selling those here. There’s only like one pot dealer here and he’s sold people oregano more than once. We’d be able to charge whatever we want, and we’d get all the business too dude. Fuck getting a summer job, right?”_

_“I dunno man, that sounds way too easy there’s gotta be-”_

Then you get rudely pulled back into normal sound by the honk from a car. It’s someone else’s parent, but you happen to notice that Dirk is right behind them. You take a very stealthy glance at the group and try to memorize their faces. You know two of three names, three of three voices, and three of three faces; now all you need is to match them up and see who’s house they’re meeting at. You get into the car with Dirk, he seems less on edge now, and he asks how your day was.

“It was ok, a bit of commotion at the start of the day though. Karkat and I had a spat, but we worked it out. It’s all good now.”

He nods at you and then pulls the car out of line to leave.

“You two always seem to work it out.”

He says, with no inflection or expression. You don’t know what to make of that, so you just nod and then pour your attention into deleting open windows on your phone. Your psychiatrist isn’t that far away, it’s only like a fifteen minute ride from school. Once you get there, Dirk pulls into a spot despite knowing he’s not gonna be accompanying you into the office today. You’re expecting him to say something, when he just up and hugs you with no warning. Not a half hug either, like, he hugs you so hard you hear your spine pop.

“Uh, Dirk, everything ok?”

“Yeah. This is just the first time you’ve ever been to therapy where I’m not gonna see you right after. So I guess, as you say, I’m having a moment here.”

You didn't remember that, actually. But when you comb through your memory, he’s right. Even when you were at your mom’s house he’d always be in the waiting room before you got there, then stick around to see you after your appointment. You started therapy at thirteen, so him always being there is a three year old tradition, and it’s about to come to an end, at least for a bit. That pulls you into a different emotional plane, one that makes you think about growing up and change and all that stuff, and you think that you’ve already faced so much more change than the average sixteen year old, and you know that things are about to change drastically again, and now you have a date for it.

This Thursday, 8:00, address TBD

__

The visit with your psychiatrist goes like normal, but you’re so stressed and you’re exhausted and overwhelmed and when you get back to the waiting room and see no one there waiting for you, you’ve gotta rush to the bathroom for a bit of a cry break, and it makes you miss your bus. Now you’ve gotta wait another half hour for the next one. You’re listening to your music and thinking about those guys from earlier. You definitely know their faces, one of them you think was in your health class freshman year, and the other two went to middle school with you, you think. The one that was in your health class, Eric maybe, seems to be the ringleader, so they’re probably meeting at his place, sucks that no one does school directories anymore. So, you do what any other Gen Z kid would do in your situation; scour Instagram for as long as it takes to find a geotagged picture that relates back to Eric. Your bus comes eventually, you swipe your card and hop on. The whole ride is spent internet sleuthing, you’re so engrossed in it that you have to rely fully on that weird intuition you have now to get you off at the right stop.

You really need a better name for it, but you decide that’s going on the backburner for now.

Now you’re all the way back to your apartment sprawled out on the couch and you’re still scrolling. Your thumb is starting to hurt, but after a little bit longer you notice a familiar face tagged in a picture for the lacrosse club from August of last year.

Bingo.

You tap on his face and the username ‘eeric_moneyz’ is what pops up.

If this isn’t the guy, you’re gonna eat this whole couch.

Sure enough, you go to the profile and scroll down until you see a house in his feed. July two years ago he made a post talking about how he did his room in the house he just moved into, tagged in a neighborhood that's a block away from the school, and more importantly, the one station in the general area where bus B stops after 6:00 on weekdays. Now you’re all up to date, This Thursday, 8:00, 381 Old Jefferson Road.

You have three days to prepare for this, and you’re gonna start with your disguise. You spend basically the whole night going back and forth between your homework and your paint job, and despite a few paint stains on your homework, everything is looking basically like what you wanted it to. You drape the leggings and leotard on your chair and curtain rod, respectively, to dry. You still don’t know what to do about the whole face part, but you’re thinking about trying to find a balaclava either in the lost and found at school or at the Goodwill a few blocks from school. Dirk’s still not home by the time you decide to head for bed, and as you’re about to dose out your night meds, you get run over by this extreme wave of fatigue and you fall asleep with the pills in your hand, unswallowed.

__

Tuesday’s balaclava search is a bust, and the rest of the day isn't anything to write home about either. The only cool thing that happened was that you and Dirk ate cereal for dinner while having a movie marathon, and things almost felt normal again. Wednesday’s similar, except you actually do obtain a balaclava from Rose. You had mentioned that you needed one, and it turns out that she had one from when she lived in New York. According to her, she never used it, she said that it was just one of those things that New Yorkers have but are too stubborn to actually use. You don’t really know anything about New York other than that your mom is from there, so you couldn’t dispute her even if you wanted to. Regardless, you have your coveted balaclava and you have a few hours to make it fit with the rest of your disguise. By the time you wake up for school on Thursday morning, your whole body feels like it’s on high alert. You’re not even hungry, but you grab a cereal bar for breakfast to not arouse suspicion from Dirk, and you half assedly eat a partially frozen PB&J at lunch for the same reason.

Dirk’s working the night shift tonight, so he leaves like an hour after you get home, and he won’t be back until just after midnight. That gives you a perfect window of time to make sure these fucking guys at least don’t attack some innocent old lady. The day starts to fly by, every minute meaningless until it hits 7:30. Dirk left two hours ago, but you still do a search of the apartment and a survey of the parking lot to make sure he’s actually gone. Once his absence is confirmed, you start getting dressed. It hits you that maybe you should’ve tried everything on before you started altering them when you slip the leotard on and discover the reason it was abandoned in the dressing room; the meteor sized hole right on the ass. How you didn’t notice it is beyond you, but you really don’t want to wear it now. The leggings are still good though, so those stay on. Another change is made when you put your jazz shoes on and remember why your feet hurt one day for every hour you wear them, so you opt for your lesser worn burgundy high tops. You gotta make sure you can still live in the bright red ones, so they get spared.

With that, you’re now just standing around in a tank top, your sick leggings, and your shoes. You notice that it’s now 7:37, and you’re gonna need to hurry your ass up if you wanna get there at 8. You start tearing your closet apart basically, searching for some kind of shirt, when you spot this ridiculously oversized burgundy pullover type thing that you got a few years back. You’d normally wear a medium sized shirt, and this thing is a triple XL, so this thing is massive. It’s also got another bonus, a hood. You pull the pullover on, along with the balaclava and some black fingerless gloves. You’re gonna pretend that they’re actual gloves instead of fishnet ones that you ‘borrowed’ from Rose. Once you get everything situated and take a look at yourself, you realize that you look ridiculous. The balaclava, hood, and gloves all come off for now; you’ll make your way there looking semi-normal and then put the identity-masking equipment on once you get close. The house is by the school, it’s like a twenty minute walk for you normally, and you’ve got twenty minutes to get there but with your new added speed you’ll probably shave a few minutes off of that.

You take your backpack with you, it’s got a first aid kit, water bottle, energy bar, and your ‘break glass in case of panic attack’ meds. You blast music through your earbuds to try and stop the tingling feeling in your hands and the floaty feeling in your gut. You don’t know why you’re doing this. You’re no hero. If you wanna do good you should volunteer at a soup kitchen or an animal shelter or something, not dress up and play superhero, trying to make yourself into something you're not.

You hate fighting.

You don’t know who this version of yourself is, this stranger who’s going out of his way to participate in violence.

This is something Bro would do.

Bro would think he’s high and mighty enough to pull this off,

Bro would go seek out fights like this,

Bro would use superhuman abilities to tip the scale in his favor during a fight.

Your mind keeps up this looping thought until you walk right into the neighborhood where the house is. 7:56. You duck behind some communal wall of mailboxes to slip your gloves, mask, and hood on. Google maps says the house is in a cul-de-sac that’s a straight shot from the entrance. You leave your bag in an empty cardboard box by the trash of the house two doors down, and then you creep into the house's backyard and hide in a bush near the backdoor. You hear a car pull up, and then hear five different male voices get out of the car and go into the house. You definitely recognize three of those voices as the guys at the dropoff line, so you guess that their plan is in motion. It occurs to you that you’re gonna be sitting in this bush for the next hour, so you occupy yourself with making pseudo-daisy chains with the leaves from the bush until you hear the backdoor open ever so slowly. You guess that means it's go time. Once you can hear them get a short distance away, you spring from your hiding place and start to tail them. You pick your backpack back up while you’re following them down to the bus station, putting some more distance between you and the group. You’re not worried about the distance, if they plan to take bus B there’s literally only one place they can go catch that bus. You stash the gloves and mask back in your bag, realizing that you put them on way too early. You’ve still gotta get on a bus and that’s way too suspect.

Then, a predicament makes itself apparent.

If you get on the bus after them, they’re gonna notice you because at least one of them knows you, and when you happen to get off at the same stop as them and then you show up in the same outfit with additional emo gloves and a mask ‘n hood combo, they’re totally gonna recognize you. The only thing you can think to do is haul ass to the bus stop to get there before they do, take your pullover off, and hide in a secluded area of the bus, and that’s exactly what you do. You take a different route to the bus stop so you won’t pass them, it’s a bit longer and more convoluted but with your enhanced speed, it doesn’t matter much. Even with enhanced hearing, the only things you can hear while you're running are the blood rushing through you and the wind you’re creating on this otherwise still night.

Once the bus stop is in sight, you hold your backpack with that weird little handle at the top that you fucking swear you’ve never seen anyone use on purpose before and pull your hoodie off, shoving it in the backpack. You’re getting pretty nervous waiting at the stop, the map says the bus arrives four times within the hour, once every fifteen minutes. It’s 9:12 now and they’re in your hearing range now, granted it’s a pretty big range but still, at most, they’re two blocks away. By the grace of God alone, the voices get drowned out as you hear the bus come down the road. There’s only one guy that gets off at the stop and the bus is desolate, so you can swipe your card and hide yourself in plain sight pretty quick. You choose one of the seats at the very back, specifically the one in the corner opposite the driver. The line of sight from the entrance is blocked by a few poles and handrails, so they won’t see you when they get on unless they go for the seats in the back at first. Which, now that you think about it, of course they’re gonna go for the seats at the back. That’s where sketchy groups of hooligans sit when they get on the bus to go commit crimes on a school night.

Well, it’s actually a long weekend so there’s no school Friday, meaning that this isn’t an actual school night but it’s still Thursday, and Thursday is just an unfun day by nature.

You can see the group walking up to the bus out the window, so you do the first thing you can think of to make sure they don’t bother coming to the back; stick your gangly spaghetti legs out to take up an extra seat and a half, meaning you’ve visibly claimed almost three of five seats. Of course, since you're a long leg short torso guy, this means you can’t see over the chairs in front of you now, because you’re almost laying flat on your back. It seems to work though, as they don’t bother with the back half of the bus at all and instead congregate directly diagonal from the driver. You decide that you’re gonna get off at the stop right after the one they get off at, so you can remain hidden. It’s honestly not far away enough to warrant being another stop, it only exists because you cross the county line, it’s not like the distance matters anyways, you’ll just hyperspeed yourself to the condemned 7/11 and wait for them to come to you. In no time, the five get off at their stop, and you note that they don’t even say thank you to the driver.

Assholes.

A few minutes later, you’re hopping off at the stop right after them, thanking the driver, and then taking off in the direction of I-20 and Wallace. Once you’re there, you take a quick gander to make sure you beat them there. You confirm that you did beat them, and then you climb up the side of the building with your sticky hands and wait up on the roof, putting your additional gear back on. While you’re waiting, you press your ear onto the roof and try to listen for any signs of life from inside. You can hear very faint breathing, but it’s so faint that you can’t tell if it’s human or animal. You’re about to crawl down the side of the building to try and look through the window, because if there’s no one in here you’re not gonna dunk on these guys for sneaking out and walking into an abandoned building, but then you start to hear those same voices. You can’t risk them seeing you sticking to the side of the building, so your only choice is to lay low on the roof, keep the group in sight, and jump in if you’re needed.

_“Well, this is it, guys. Are y’all ready to do this shit?”_

_“Dude, I still don’t think this is a good idea I mean, what if it’s like a trap or something and there’s cops waiting in there to arrest us?”_

_“Holy shit Michael are you still on this? Look, we’ve already made it this far, let’s just do it.”_

_“Besides, what would they arrest us for at this point? We’re allowed to be outside at night y’know.”_

_“Don’t worry man, It’s just the adrenaline. Once you get in there and get busy you won’t have time to worry about a thing.”_

_“Ok. Yeah ok, you’re all right. Sorry. Let’s do this fuckin’ thing.”_

_“There he is! I knew you’d come around eventually. Alright, everyone got their knives?”_

The group makes affirmatives and your blood runs cold. You didn’t know they were gonna bring knives.

Why would they even have those? Why would they walk in holding them?

It makes no sense, unless-

Unless they were planning to tie up loose ends and make sure the old woman couldn’t report anything.

Holy shit.

 _Holy. Shit_ _._

You just went and shoved yourself into a group of wayward teens fun filled night of theft and attempted murder.

The group walks into the store two by two, except for Eric who’s at the head of them all. You can see some extra lights, probably the flashlights on their phones and that’s when the faint breathing stops and turns into a loud gasp. A gasp from a woman. From a certifiable human woman. A certifiable human woman who’s in danger now, and you’re just sitting up here playing telephone. That’s when you crawl forward so you can lean in front of the opening where a door should be, upside down. Only the woman notices you at first, pointing at you with a shaky hand. That prompts one of the guys to look back at you, and you give him a pleasant wave after he does his double take.

“Well, hello to you too.”

You mutter to him.

All the rest of the group turns and focuses on you, which gets you to jump down from the roof and actually stand in the doorway.

“Hey I don’t know if y’all know, but per company policy, anyone caught brandishing a switch-blade will be escorted off the premises, and I think we all know that I just caught each of you red handed.”

The boys all look at each other, obviously not expecting this. The only smart one in the group, Michael you’re guessing, books it through a broken window without a second thought.

“See, that guy gets it.”

“Wh- who the fuck are you? What are you doing here?”

Eric shouts,

“What am I doing here? Dude, I’m not the one harassing transient old ladies on a Thursday night. What are y’all doing here?”

You respond. Evidently, the old lady is bored of the inaction, because she picks up a wooden board from the floor and whacks one of the boys right in the back, and he drops like a sack of hammers. That gets the remaining three to all turn back to her, and then start backing up as she starts advancing on them. While they’re looking at her, you also close in on them, causing one of the guys to bump against you.

The one that bumped into you freezes, looks at you, then the lady, then back to you, and then he took off for the door so fast that there’s a visible boy-shaped puff of smoke occupying the space he was standing in. The other boy looks at Eric and says,

“I’m sorry man, I didn’t sign up for this kind of shit.”

Then he takes off out the door too.

Now it’s just you, Eric, an old lady with a two by four, and some unconscious guy taking a linoleum nap all staring at each other at 9:30 on a Thursday night in a condemned 7/11.

You literally could not make this shit up.

Eric’s obviously pissed, he’s looking between everyone else in the building red faced and indignant. At some point, though, he decides he’s the maddest at you.

*He lunges for you, knife in hand and at that exact second, you’re transported out of Houston and into the Chihuahuan Desert in western Texas.

The sun’s beating down on you as Bro forces you to keep sparring with him. You're bloody, and you’d be sweating profusely if you hadn’t already sweat out all available fluid. Soon though, Dirk gets back from his latest pointless “training exercise” and takes you back into the camper to patch your wounds and rehydrate you. Once little you gives into his body and passes the fuck out, you pop back to the present.*

Eric’s form is sloppy as all hell and he has a weak grip on the knife, so when he actually manages to get a superficial slice on your shoulder, you move your wounded arm and manage to dislodge the knife from him. With that out of the way, you go for a forceful elbow right in the middle of the chest, knocking him to the ground and knocking the wind out of him. He writhes around for a minute before staggering to his feet, he starts backing away from you, but he maintains a wide eyed stare.

“You never told me who you were.”

Eric says in a hoarse whisper. You do a little smile, you know he can’t see your mouth and probably can’t see your eyes well enough to tell, but it’s not a smile for him. It’s a smile for yourself, because of all the things that you planned to debut today, you were most proud of this.

“You can call me Spider-Man.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> its a long one!!! this one was a DOOZY to write but i hope u like it!! i kinda dont know how i feel abt the ending but im sure u guys dont like the cliffhanger aspect of it lmao. again im sorry for how long this took to post but i cannot properly articulate how hard everything in my life hit the fan. but everythings gonna be ok!! it'll all work out! also, quite a few things in this chapter are ripped from my real life, like my strong opinions on the Persian war (i'll let u read my essay abt it if u want, i feel so strongly abt this) and the fact that in my sophomore year i actually did have an english teacher named 'ms. place' but we couldn't call her that because she had a doctorate. also the pullover dave's wearing at the end is something im currently wearing and its Glorious. I haven't started the next chapter yet, but i'm gonna start tomorrow to ignore the increasing amount of covid-19 symptoms i have. anyway, i hope ur all doing good and thank u all for all the support on this fic, ur all seriously too nice and all the comments make my day so just thank y'all a million times over. my tungle is @squish-nebula if u want to ask me anything abt the fic or just want to say hi! final note, the instagram account isn't a real one and the address i used happens to be that of a shopping center a few towns over from me, so theres no real substance to either 'real world tie'  
> thank u all again for reading this fic and my way too long rambles at the end, ur all wonderful and i hope u smile today!! <3


	4. great responsibility

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a light tw is in place for flashbacks/nightmares and a description of injuries and fighting violence. all instances of these are marked by asterisks (*) at the beginning or end. as always, if you can't read the chapter for these or any other reason, message me on tumblr @squish-nebula or insta @lordroach_  
> i hope you all enjoy

You walk all the way home from the 7/11 at the speed of molasses going down a hill. You rip your mask off during the walk, you didn’t really expect to be sweating so much at night, but you guess that’s the nature of April in Houston. The old lady was appreciative enough of your help to give you a Chupa Chup and then tell you to fuck off. You eat it on your walk, not even caring that she gave you a sugar-free orange flavored one, which is objectively one of the worst ones. You should be on an upswing at the moment, but instead the post-adrenaline high chemistry in your brain makes you feel like you just got thrown off a pier wearing concrete shoes. You have no concept of how long the walk home is, your brain is completely static. All you know is that when you get home it’s 10:45 at night.

The first order of business is making sure Dirk is still gone, another parking lot scan confirms that he’s still punching the clock. Next, you change clothes. You’re going with fuzzy soft PJ pants, this hideous neon Hawaiian print t-shirt you found while thrifting, and fuzzy socks, because goddamn you sure got your steps in today. Next, you go to examine the wound on your shoulder to find that it’s approaching papercut status now; you’re gonna guess that you heal faster now too, which is very convenient. Actually, you think everything about you is just faster in general. You’re already noticing that your jeans are starting to get looser in the waist and that it’s just a smidge too easy to pull your binder on in the morning. You’re eating enough to feed the entire population of North America, so you’re not sure why-

That's when it hits you.

It’s gotta be your metabolism; and now that you realize that, you understand why your meds aren't working as well as they normally do. You're not taking enough to offset the increased metabolism, so instead of your normal dose lasting about fourteen hours, it only stays in your system for a fraction of the time. That’s a bit of a relief, at first you were worried that they just up and stopped working, but now that presents another issue. You only get thirty pills of each of your meds a month, so you’re gonna run out hella fast. That's quite a conundrum; a conundrum for future Dave to figure out. Because right now you are about to make like Sleeping Beauty on her 16th birthday.

__

You forgot to turn your alarm off, so you’re rudely awoken at 6:30 as if it were a normal school day. You can hear Dirk pacing back and forth between the living room and kitchen, talking quietly to someone on the phone. You sit up to make sure you don’t fall back asleep, but when you do your faithfully obnoxious bed frame makes a squeak that makes your teeth hurt. When it does, you notice that the sound of Dirk’s footsteps stop momentarily and he also stops talking. He creeps to your door almost silently and stops right outside. You know he’s listening to see if you’re up so you freeze in place, but you can’t help but notice that now that Dirk’s closer, you can hear whoever he’s talking to on the phone now, too.

_“-making progress with the shipment from two weeks ago, but I want to see the progress you’ve made with your little side project. You have no idea how useful that could be.”_

Dirk sighs, and he walks back into the living room.

“I can’t just drop everything and come in. I took off this weekend. It's a holiday and I’m gonna be spending time with my kid and the rest of my family.”

You get a warm feeling in your chest when you hear Dirk call you his kid, he’s never used that in front of you. You wonder if that’s how he talks about you to other people when you’re not around.

Now that he’s back in the living room, you can’t hear the guy on the phone anymore, but you can still hear Dirk.

“That’s real fucking low, even for you. Fine. I’ll come in for an hour.”

Woah. 

Dirk’s tone is flatter than Illinois and you know that that means he’s pissed. 

“An hour and a half. Final offer.”

“Fine.”

You hear Dirk set his phone down on the counter roughly. Then you hear him start to write something down, presumably on the fridge board, and then he goes back into his room. You check the time again on your phone, 6:47. You try to fall asleep again but you can’t stop thinking about Dirks’ phone call. Who was he talking to? You know it’s someone from work, his boss maybe? You don’t know. The voice doesn’t sound familiar at all, all you know is that it’s a guy that works with Dirk. 

What “side project” was he referring too? A shipment of what from two weeks ago? Why was that guy so insistent on Dirk coming in today? And what did Dirk have planned for you two today?

Ok, maybe one of those things is not like the others, but it’s still a valid question. 

You’re staring at the ceiling racking your brain until the sun rises and you decide to get out of bed. You shuffle into the kitchen to see a glass of sweet tea, turkey bacon, and cinnamon toast on a plate sitting at your spot at the table. 

“Good morning, Dave. I made breakfast.” Dirk says just a bit too loudly.

“Oh, thanks. What’s the occasion, breakfast commemorating you wearing your shades inside?”

Dirk’s expression doesn’t change, and you can feel his eyes behind his shades tear themselves away from you before he responds.

“No. I just wanted to do something special for you. I also have some stuff planned for later today, but I have to go in to work for an hour and a half first, ok?” 

He sounds so remorseful about it, and it kinda makes your chest tighten. God, he feels really bad about this. You should press for more information, but you can’t bring yourself to interrogate your brother who’s only ever looked out for you.

“Yeah, that’s fine. No worries. It’s only 9, there’s still a lot of the day left, have fun at work.” You say softly, giving him a smile before taking a sip of your tea. For his part, Dirk looks relieved and places a small kiss onto the top of your head. 

Dirk eats breakfast with you and you two talk while he reads the local paper like a dweeb, and you eventually realize that he’s not listening to you anymore. 

“Dirk? Hello? What’s so interesting there? Is Obama coming to do a tour or something? Dude if Obama comes to Houston, we have to go. I need to see him in person. You don’t understand-”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“Then what is it?”

Dirk turns the paper around and holds it in front of you, and you get an eyeful of exactly what caught his attention.

It’s a split page, you suppose that they couldn’t decide which should be the headline. On the left is an update in the case of the robbery of Houston Techs’ science department, where you can see that the police think that everything stolen is still in the city because it hasn’t been used anywhere else yet. 

On the right, you see a very familiar figure, standing across from a few other familiar figures, in a very familiar condemned 7/11 on the corner of I-20 and Wallace. You get this odd cold feeling in your chest that spreads through your whole body. 

You were so sure that you hadn’t been spotted. 

It was a damn good picture too, so you don’t understand how you didn’t see a flash or hear a camera shutter.

“Oh shit, I’ve gotta head out now. Sorry again, but I promise I’ll be back soon, and then the rest of the days gonna be fun; you’re gonna love it.”

You reassured him that it’s all good, even though nothing’s good anymore. You continue to sit at the table, quietly freaking out, while Dirk grabs his stuff and leaves. Once he does, you grab the newspaper and read as fast as you can. 

_Does Houston have its own designated hero like so many other cities in the country and around the world?_

_Why did this mysterious figure make himself known now? Is there something coming?_

_...nothing but trouble..._

_...beating up on some innocent boys just having some teenage fun…_

_...this ‘Spider-Man’ should hang up the stupid tights and mask before someone gets hurt…_

You loosen your grip on the paper and let it fall to the ground, you get up and leave it and your dishes. You feel completely numb. You walk into your bedroom and take a look at yourself in your mirror. 

You look haggard; messy hair, smudges of dirt all over, you look dusty somehow, and not to mention you didn’t even shower when you came home last night, so you still smell like you just ran a marathon. You sit down in front of the mirror, and you stare at yourself until you’re compelled to fill the silence with something.

“I have no idea what I’m doing, man. The paper’s right, I’m gonna get someone hurt and I’m gonna attract a villain here eventually. A villain that I could never beat in a million years. I’m still fucking sixteen years old, I’m a fucking sophomore and I think I’m special, why? Oh because I have sticky hands sometimes and I can barely control it? How fucking groundbreaking, a teenage boy with sticky hands, no one's ever heard of that before. Like, there’s no denying that I have heightened abilities. It's just that like, God what do I think I’m doing? I can’t fly or shoot lasers from my eyes, or control fire, I don’t have telekinesis; I can stick to things, I can run fast, I have a faster metabolism, I have good hearing, I can heal fast, I have this annoying ass omnipotent intuition, and I can pick things up and I can put them down 70% of the time. Why did I ever fucking think that I could help with powers like that? I mean hey if there’s a dam that bursts and I need to stick my fucking finger in it or some shit then yea maybe I can help but like, that’s never gonna happen, not here.”

You flop down on your back, tired from thinking so much and berating yourself. That’s when you re-remember that you’re still covered in last nights’ sweat and grime, so no matter how much you might detest both yourself and morning showers, you’re gonna have to take care of yourself and take a goddamn morning shower. 

Somehow, this is Rose’s fault. 

You let yourself lose track of time as best you can, and you stand in the too-hot shower for a bit longer than you can really stand. When you get out, you feel a bit light headed and your skin is bright red, angry at you for putting it in near scalding water for as long as you did. You get yourself dried and dressed for whatever Dirk’s mystery outing of the day is. Then you lay on your bed, headphones in, staring at the ceiling, music blaring, head empty. It isn’t until Dirk opens the door to your room that you realize time has passed. Once he says hi and lightly scolds you for not cleaning up after yourself, he also goes to get ready and you go clean up the table. Dirk’s refusing to tell you where you’re going, insisting on it being a surprise, so you’ll just have to wait and see where he takes you. 

__

Dirk knows you so goddamn well. 

At first, you’re confused as to where you’re going, and then you get more confused when you notice that he’s taking you to the campus of Houston Tech. 

“Uh, Dirk? Why are you taking me to your school?”

Dirk takes his eyes off the road for a split second and smiles at you.

“Well, the anthropology department is setting up an exhibit for the next week and I thought that you’d like to see it before it’s officially open. There’s a bunch of bones, fossils, and artifacts from early humans there. And don’t worry about people, since it’s set to open tomorrow morning and it’s basically all done there shouldn’t be a crowd so you’ll have mostly free reign.” 

All the strife of the morning gets buried under your raw excitement. You knew this exhibit was a thing that would be happening, but you didn’t know that Dirk was gonna up and take you to it and give you VIP access. 

“Seriously? Holy shit, is this even allowed?”

Dirk pulls into the parking lot and you both get out of the car. 

“Yep. I do have a lecture at 3:00 though, but it’s only 45 minutes and I think you can take care of yourself for that amount of time, I’ll come find you after that and we can look around together. That good?”

You nod enthusiastically and that gets Dirk to smile at you and chuckle a bit. 

“Ok, good. See I told you you’d like it.”

“And you were right as fuck I’ll never doubt you again.” You say seriously

That gets Dirk to laugh again and he rolls his eyes at you.

“I’ll believe that when I see it.”

He starts walking toward the building and you follow him, you have a bit of a bounce in your step and you know it’s gotta look uncool as all hell but you just can’t help it, you’re pumped.

Dirk continues to guide you through the building until you get to this atrium that's been set up as this mini-museum, with skeletons and artifacts set up in glass display cases. Among them appears to be some kind of whistle or something, and that’s what you decide to head to first. Dirk leaves you to do your nerd shit while he goes and does his. 

You’re so engrossed in this ancient instrument that it takes you a minute to feel the mental tingling feeling of your sixth sense. You take a look around you, and besides a few people walking in the hallways around you, you’re all alone. Annoyed, you rip your focus from your beloved old as fuck whistle and concentrate on what your intuition is telling you. 

_Everything is not as it seems._

You go from annoyed to genuinely angry. What kind of vague bullshit is that? That’s the kind of shit Rose says to you when she’s mad at you.

All the other previous times this thing has reared its head it's been specific, and now, what, it’s expecting you to look into the meaning of that? You know what? Not fucking today. No more of this shit today. You and Dirk are gonna hang out all day and have a great day today, and if your new sense isn’t even going to do you the decency of giving you so much as an iota of information, then you’re just gonna ignore it. Everything has been nonstop since this bullshit started, and after last night and this morning you need a break. You pull out your phone and earbuds and start listening to some music as you continue to walk through the exhibit, but that feeling is getting more and more intense and eventually the music just isn’t cutting it anymore. You’re not much of a podcast person, but you figure that human voices talking will be able to keep your attention more than rhythmic beats and melodic voices. There’s this true crime one that Rose, John, and Karkat have been talking about for a few weeks, so you type in the name and hit play on the episode at the top. You’re also not a massive true crime person, for good reason; you’ve lived that shit and don’t need to hear about it in your free time, but hey it’s a day of unusual entertainment for you. The great chemistry between the two ladies and the fact that even with the very dark subject matter, the hosts can still crack some jokes that are never at the expense of the victim captivates you pretty quickly. As you half your focus between the podcast and the displays, the grating feeling of foreboding fades to the background, and then just like that, Dirk comes back from his lecture and lets you show him your favorites from the exhibit, then you both walk back to the car. You stop and pick up some fast food on the ride back, the rest of the day is filled with the two of you watching bad soap operas and fucking around on your joint Minecraft world. Before you head off to bed, Dirk turns to the local news to get the weather for tomorrow, and that’s when you see a developing story of another burglary at Houston Tech along with one at the University of Houston. If that isn't enough, the added news that there were a few serious injuries and a casualty at the University of Houston makes you go numb all over. 

_“Everything is not as it seems”_

You can’t believe you were so selfish; that you chose to just ignore your intuition so you could have a good day and you let this happen. You knew something was up, and you chose to do nothing. As far as you’re concerned, the blood’s on your hands. Dirk, completely unaware of your inner turmoil, shakes his head and tells you to be careful whenever you go out. You say that you will, and then you head to bed and attempt to sleep. Your guilt keeps you awake for a few hours, meds be damned, as you replay the lengths you went to avoid being a decent person today. You feel like you have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, the angel condemning your actions while the devil rationalizes that you had no idea what the sense meant by “everything is not as it seems” and therefore you couldn’t have done anything with it. It just makes you feel miserable like you got your hair stuck in a pool drain except instead of drowning in chlorinated lukewarm stagnant piss-water you’re drowning in guilt. You’d have to ask Karkat for confirmation, but you think you just experienced being Catholic for a second there with all that guilt. 

Eventually, you manage to fall asleep, but that doesn’t mean your conscious is done with beating you up. 

__

*You’re not sure exactly when you are, or where you are for that matter, but you can feel the freezing temperature and the bone-dry air surrounding you. It’s also pitch black save for the light of a distant house, and the sky’s clear in a way that’s only possible in the middle of nowhere. That lets you spin a theory; it’s sometime during the night, and you’re back in the desert. Immediately following that, you notice a bright as fuck flashlight shining at you from pretty far away and illuminating your back, but now you know exactly what’s happening now. 

You’re back in hunting season.

And that’s all you need to know before you start running, there’s no guaranteed safety in the house, but at least the hunt’s off if you manage to get there. It’s not easy to run in the sand, but it seems a thousand times harder right now. You swear the house is getting farther away the more you run towards it. Something compels you to make the cardinal sin of looking over your shoulder to check where he is, you don’t see him but you know that if anything, that means he’s closer.

You press on running, finally clawing your way towards the house. For a split second, you think you’re actually gonna make it there until the first of the chain link fences that surround the house stops you in your tracks. You fall flat on your back from the force of your run into the fence, and you can feel him getting closer to you. That spurs you to your feet and you decide that the only way to go now, is up.

It’s not that hard to climb a chain link fence, but this one seems to grow with every inch you climb up. After what seems like an eternity of climbing, your hands grip onto the top of the fence and you begin to haul yourself up. That’s when you hear a soft bang in the distance, and feel a sharp shooting pain in your upper left shoulder, one strong enough to knock you over the top of the fence and right into one of many booby traps set up for this exact reason. Somehow, you hadn’t thought about them, even though he made you help him set these up. Your upper half smacks down onto the normal sandy ground, but your legs get ensnared in what can only be described as a bush of barbed wire. 

The more you struggle, the deeper the barbs cut into you. You can feel the sand getting wet with blood, but you can’t make yourself stop struggling. You just have so much adrenaline and you can hear his footsteps and he’s getting close and you need to get away. You don't even want to think of what he'd do to you if he found you this vulnerable.

As you’re caught up in your spiral of fear, a sudden kick to the back of your head slams your face right into the sandy dirt below, and everything goes black. 

Hopefully, he’s feeling mercy today and he'll just gonna leave you here until you can manage to free yourself. He wouldn't let you die out here, bitten by a snake pr cooked alive in the sun. There's no fun for him in that. 

Once you come to, you have to resort to taking your shirt off and ripping it on two so that you can tourniquet both your legs. Once those are in place you spend the entire rest of the day pulling each individual barb out of your leg until you’re free. 

You stagger up to the next fence, but luckily this one has a gate that you can just unlock and walk through. You get to the door and turn the handle, only to find it locked. 

Well then.

You’ll just have to go another night with no antiseptic or bandages for your legs and sleep on the porch under the stars. 

When you close your eyes in the world of your past, you open them to the present. 

Dirk is sitting on the side of your bed, hands on your shoulders, hovering right over you, and yelling your name. You’re shocked for a second and then you shoot upright and swat Dirks hands off you. You’re out of the bed in the next millisecond and heading into the bathroom to run your hands under cold water to slow your heart rate and to check yourself over. 

You pull your left arm out of your massive sleep shirt and look at it from all angles in the mirror. There’s no wound, just the pink indented scar from where Bro shot you that night. It’s the same when you look at your legs, too. No wounds, just the hundreds of thin scratch-like scars from being stuck in the wire. Apparently, you hadn’t even bothered to close the door when you ran in here, and Dirk is standing in the doorway, looking at you with a sad but knowing look.

“Did you have a nightmare about your first hunting season again?” He asks.

You don’t trust your voice to talk right now, so you just nod and he comes over and pulls you into a tight hug that you return a second later. He has his cheek resting on top of your head when he very quietly says,

“I’m so sorry. You’re safe now, he can’t hurt you anymore. I won’t let him.” *

You believe him, but there’s a part of you that knows that Dirk can’t protect you from everything. Especially not anymore.

Dirk loosens the hug a bit so he can look you in the eyes. 

“Are you gonna be up for the rest of today? We can always start tomorrow instead if you’re not feeling good.” He says softly.

That pulls you into confusion, what’s today? When you ask, Dirk gives you a bit of a funny look. 

“Uh Dave, it’s the start of Passover, remember? You’re meant to go back to your moms a day early so you don’t have to pack or move during the holiday. It’s the whole reason you came over early; so that the days would even out.”

As soon as Dirk finishes talking, you get hit with a wave of remembering. Maybe you don’t have the energy to deal with a full family gathering, but you know how much planning had to go into this and you’re determined to not fuck up again. 

“Yeah man, I’ll be fine for today. I’ll be more than fine actually, once this all _passes-over me, I’ll be the life of the Seder.”_

__

Dirk fully breaks the hug now, shoving you lightly in the shoulder in punishment for what might be your worst pun of the month. 

__

“Ok yeah, you’re fine. It’s only 7:00 now and we’re supposed to be there at 3:00, so the morning is yours basically, just make sure you get all packed and ready to go by 2:30.”

__

“Ok I will,” you respond 

__

Dirk nods again, hanging around for the exact right amount of extra seconds to make it awkward, and then leaves your room. 

__

You’re glad Dirk left when he did because you nearly collapse back into your bed once he shuts the door. You’re just so exhausted. You manage to get an extra three hours of sleep, and when you wake up you feel less like a zombie, but you still don’t feel good by any means. 

__

You pack at a snail's pace and get ready even slower, but you still manage to be ready just before 2:30.

__

The car ride there is uneventful, save for the green sedan that decides that even though it’s in the lane turning right, it actually needs to go left. Did the driver just make the wrong turn and then turn around in a parking lot somewhere? Of course not; they just went across the entire intersection with no warning nearly causing a pileup in their wake. 

__

You wish you saw their face, you don’t want to enact vigilante justice or anything, but you think they at least deserve to only eat stale bread and refrozen ice cream for the rest of time. 

__

You get there just before 3, and once you get out of the car you’re greeted by a crushing hug from Roxy, while Dirk gets his own from Rose. 

__

“Rox I, I’m happy to see you too, but I’ve only got three unmarred ribs and they can’t withstand the sheer force of this hug.”

__

That gets Roxy to let go and she flashes you an uncomfortable smile. She still doesn’t know exactly how to react to your occasional abuse related jokes and you suppose that’s fair, so you do her the favor of extinguishing the topic by turning your attention to Rose. 

__

“Woah hey, you should have told me you were gonna wear a suit we could’ve matched! Traitor.” Rose just laughs at that and comes in for a sweet sweet twin hug. That’s when you see your Mom approach your little sibling throng with open arms and wraps all of you, with the exception of Dirk, into an awkward hug. 

__

“Welcome home, Dave. Oh, I’m so happy to have all my babies back under my roof.” She says this very dramatically, and very pointedly. Yeah, it’s normal for Mom to greet you when you come back, but it’s normally just a quick hug and a hello, then the day just continues on. It hits you just a second later that she’s doing this because Dirk is here, and when you turn to look at him, he looks exasperated and more than a little annoyed. Dirk clears his throat once he decides that hug o’clock is over and Mom's demeanor changes immediately. 

__

“Hello, Dirk. Thanks for coming.” 

__

“Hi Rachel. Thanks for having me.”

__

There’s a moment of tense silence before Roxy shatters it with her weaponized cheerfulness,

__

“Guys! Enough standing out here, you’ve gotta see how we decorated inside! Come on!”

__

With that, she runs up the two stairs that lead to the deck and back door, urging everyone to follow her. 

__

When you walk inside, you see that Roxy was not fucking around with the decorations. There are sheer red scarves stuck up above every doorway, slices of dried fruit and dried flowers on the mantle, and the table is set up with some very opulent gold candles and a crochet lace tablecloth that’s all white except for a blue stripe running along the bottom, with embroidered flowers and plants scattered around. The plates and everything else are the same every year, but this time Roxy really outdid herself, and you tell her as such.

__

“Aww, thank you, but I can’t take all the credit, Rose and Kanaya made that tablecloth together and personally, I think it’s the best part.” 

__

Rose flushes just a bit from the complement, and Dirk goes up to the table to look a bit closer at the piece, running his fingers over some of the embroidering.

__

“Holy shit Rose, you made this? That’s amazing, good job.” He sounds really impressed, and Rose goes up to hug him again in while professing that it’s not just her work, but Kanaya worked on it too, adding that,

__

“I did the crocheting and she did the embroidery. I think it’s the embroidery that really makes it wonderful, but if you ask her she’ll say it’s the crocheting.” 

__

She looks so happy when she talks about Kanaya and it always makes you smile. That, and you’re glad that after last week Rose and Dirk are finally meeting in person again. 

__

Your mom decides to shatter the mood once again by basically prying Rose and Dirk apart and standing right between them, and that drives everyone to take their place at the table and begin the dinner.

__

Everything goes well, despite the palpable tension between your mom and Dirk. Once the dinner is over and the plates are cleared, you and the rest of your family change into pajamas and gather around the TV to watch The Prince of Egypt, as is family tradition.

__

__

__

__

__

Eventually, Dirk has to leave and head back to his place. The goodbye is short, and your mom is watching it all like a shark. After he’s gone, you head upstairs to go to bed when your phone buzzes.

__

tentacleTherapist [TT] has begun pestering turntechGodhead [TG] 

__

TT: Open the door.   
TG: why are you texting me instead of knocking  
TT: I don't feel like it. Open the door, bitch.   
TG: are you not even gonna say please bitch  
TT: I can and I will break this door down, bitch.  
TG: fine bitch  


__

You walk the whole ten feet to your door and find Rose standing there, phone in hand. Despite the antagonistic tone of the conversation you two just had, she gives you a pretty tight hug as soon as you open the door. You’re confused but hug her back as best you can, even though she’s pressing on your shoulder cut from the other day. It might be papercut status now, but papercuts still hurt. Rose lets go of you and gently pushes past you, walking into your room. 

__

“God, today was exhausting.” She says, exasperated. 

__

“Oh yeah, but at least it wasn’t as bad as last year, you remember that?”

__

“Please don’t remind me, I never want to think about mom opening the door for Elijah and being so drunk that she started screaming for him to come in for dinner while the neighbors were having a birthday party for their six year old daughter out in their front lawn. Did you know that they skip this house on Halloween now? We give out mini sodas and they skip us because of her.” 

__

Rose flops down face first on your bed as she speaks, and then she wraps herself in one of your throw blankets. When she’s all burritoed, she gives you a quizzical look.

__

“What’s that cut on your shoulder from? It looks like a massive papercut.”

__

“Oh this? Oh yeah I um, cut my arm on one of the fly system wires during tech theatre last week, not a big deal y’know?” 

__

Rose seems satisfied by that, and you’re unsettled that you seem to be getting better at lying to the people you love. You and Rose spend the rest of the night just shooting the shit, watching some movies, and painting each other's nails until you both fall asleep on your bed. In the morning, you both head down to the kitchen to get breakfast. Cold brew with vanilla oat milk for Rose, and a little bowl of blueberries and your meds for you. There’s typically not a lot of things planned out for weekends at your mom's house, so you’re prepared to just do some homework and vibe for the rest of the day, and that works for you until the evening. You and Karkat are texting back and forth, trying to make up the lab that the two of you missed out on the other day. You’re actually making good progress despite the fact that neither of you has any science equipment at all and you’re just bullshitting it. That’s when that same tingling intuition grasps your attention and silently screams at you.

__

_Drop everything. You need to get downtown, right now._

__

This thing never comes at a convenient time. 

__

TG: kat can we take a break? theres some stuff going on in the house rn   
CG: YEAH OF COURSE. ARE YOU ALRIGHT? WHAT’S GOING ON?   
TG: yea yea im alright it just sounds like rox and mom are fighting and i think im gonna have to intervene   
CG: HOW DID YOU MANAGE TO GET SUCH A RAW CUT OF THE ASSHOLE DECK?   
CG: DO YOU WANT TO COME OVER? I KNOW IT’S ALWAYS A SHIT SHOW OVER HERE ON PRINCIPAL, BUT YOU’RE ALWAYS WELCOME. BRING ROSE AND ROXY TOO, WE’RE HAVING SUNDAY DINNER AND YOU CAN ALL JOIN US.   


__

Your chest hurts a bit, having to deny his invitation. You’d love to spend time with his family, but you’re not gonna risk not listening to that little voice again. People got hurt last time you ignored it. Someone _died_ because of your selfishness, so you’re really not deserving of having any kind of comfort at all because of it.

__

TG: id seriously love that but if this fight doesnt stop now its gonna grow into something so much worse u know   
CG: I UNDERSTAND, BUT MARK MY WORDS IM GONNA MAKE YOU ATTEND A SUNDAY DINNER   
TG: youre saying this like i dont want to attend a sunday dinner at your house   
TG: do i have to go to mass w y’all tho? i mean id b fine w it but i need time to learn latin   
CG: DAVE. THIS IS A POST VATICAN II CHURCH. MASS ISN’T EXCLUSIVELY IN LATIN ANYMORE. REGARDLESS, YOU WOULDN’T HAVE TO GO TO MASS WITH US IF YOU DIDN'T WANT TO, YOU’D JUST COME OVER FOR DINNER.   
TG: oh sick   
TG: ok gtg i love you   
CG: ALRIGHT. BE SAFE, TEXT ME IF YOU NEED ANYTHING. I LOVE YOU TOO   


__

turntechGodhead [TG] has ceased pestering carcinoGeneticist [CG] 

__

You hope he knows that you’d learn Latin for him in a heartbeat. 

__

You scramble to get all your gear on, save for the mask, and you almost head out right after, but you realize that a silent room on a Sunday afternoon is gonna be weird, so you leave a playlist of yours on at medium volume to throw your family off. Lucky for you, it’s been overcast all day, so even though the sun hasn’t set yet, it’s still kinda dark outside. You open your window, remove the bug screen, and scale down the wall of your house. 

__

Downtown is a bit farther away from you when you’re staying with your mom. Good thing that you still have that enhanced speed and can still get there relatively quickly. You have to stop your run and slow down when you pass anyone out walking, but at least there aren’t a lot of people out and about. 

__

You let your sense guide you, and once you start getting closer to your target you realize that you recognize this place. You can’t place it until you get a bit closer to the specific building that your intuition is leading you to. 

__

_Holy shit, this is where Dirk works_

__

You walk around the perimeter of the building until you duck into the alley that it’s attached to. That’s where you slip your mask on and stash for go-bag. You’re about to come out of the shadow when you hear the door from the building that opens to the alley start to squeak open. You crouch down in the very back corner, partially behind the dumpster, and hope that you go unnoticed. 

__

Two men walk out of the building, one in white coveralls and gloves; and the other in an all white tux and the single ugliest neon green button up and bow tie you’ve ever seen, and they’re talking to each other. One of them seems to be trying to explain the science behind the limits of magnetism, and the other is listening intently. 

__

_“We’re making progress with it, but we’re having trouble balancing the weight of the entire harness because it has to be light enough to sustain being in the air, but magnets that strong aren’t exactly lightweight. We’re going to need more time, I don’t think we’ll have it ready by Friday-”_

__

The other guy cuts the one speaking off just by raising his hand, and the one who had been speaking shrinks back in response. This guy hasn’t even spoken yet and you already don’t like this guy.

__

_“So you’re telling me that you’re gonna need another extension? Even after I’ve already given you a whole extra six weeks and hired more help for you?”_

__

The guy in the labware backs up a bit and raises his hands up defensively.

__

_“I understand that you’re upset, sir but I promise that we’re all working as hard as we can. You can’t rush science, Mr. Scratch.”_

__

White tux guy, Mr. Scratch apparently, pauses for a second, seemingly accepting what the other man said. That’s when he shoots forward, wrapping his hand around the guy's throat, lifting him up and slamming him against the brick wall of the side of the building. You jump a bit involuntarily as Mr. Scratch starts to yell at his victim,

__

_“You will finish it by Friday. Also, I have a fucking doctorate.”_

__

The man choking tries to say something but has no air to do so. Doc Scratch holds him up for a few more seconds before throwing him to the ground and watching him scramble back into the building. Doc Scratch then lights a cigarette, and leans against the wall opposite of you to smoke it. You just sit there watching him smoke. What are you even supposed to do? Give out statistics on lung cancer? After he finishes up with the cig, he suddenly walks towards you and stands right in front of you and making you feel claustrophobic. 

__

“So this is Houston’s own Spider-Man? Curled up by a dumpster dressed in rags just sitting there like a bump on a log.”

__

“I’d rather wear rags over that god awful highlighter colored button up, dude. You look like a glowstick.”

__

He doesn’t exactly laugh at that, but he exhales through his nose and gives you a menacing smile.

__

“Look, kid, I respect the spunk and I respect the drive, but I’m warning you now, if you do anything to fuck up what I’ve got going here or go squealing, I’ll break each of your fingers one by one. Got it?”

__

Dave is scared, cowering in the corner of your mind immersed in your past. By contrast, Spider-Man is almost hoping for more chances to insult this self important fucker, uninhibited by fear and trauma.

__

“I’ve already had someone break all my fingers, does the chef recommend anything else?”

__

“I don’t like to hurt guests on my property. Don’t think that I won’t, though.”

__

Before you can respond, he takes the lit butt of his cigarette and presses it into the skin of your hand that’s in grabbing range. You press yourself harder into the wall, and while your distracted Scratch kicks you onto your side. Scratch takes that opportunity to kick you good a few times in the abdomen until you’re coughing. Once he decides he’s done, Scratch kneels down in front of you, speaking softly,

__

“See kid? You’re not cut out for this. Take my handkerchief, clean yourself up, and run on home. I’m sure your momma is missing you by now.”

__

He drops a similarly colored neon green handkerchief on your face, then just up and leaves you lying by a dumpster in an alley. After a few minutes, you’re able to get yourself up and stagger away. The street’s empty now, so you don’t even bother to take any parts of your costume off. You’re glad that you brought your earbuds because you need some beats to lick your wounds too. You don’t bother to run at all, and you end up going back to your house and crawling up the wall into your bedroom. Your music is blaring, and you flop face down on your bed, in pain, and defeated. You look up suddenly when you feel a very light tap on your bed. You pick your head up just enough to look down and see what hit your bed, 

__

A dark green ball of yarn.

__

Yarn that rolled toward you from the other side of your room.

__

Where you look up to find Rose, sitting on your admittedly sweet rocking desk chair. It looks like she was knitting, waiting for you to get back, and then you up and wall crawled right in front of her. Her mouth is hanging open and her eyes are darting around the room, she’s sputtering softly. There aren’t many times where both of you are at a loss for words. 

__

Rose stands abruptly and walks over to you slowly, pointing at you.

__

“You. You’re the person from the paper the other day. You’re the Spider-Man. Holy fuck.”

__

You can’t think of a cohesive sentence, instead, you start sputtering exactly like she did before you manage to say one squeaky, unsure word.

__

“...yes?”

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)  
> here she is! it took a bit longer than i wanted to post, but after i finished writing last night i just couldn't edit or proofread it. i hope u like it! this hasnt actually been beta read so if u see something thats off or fucky u cen tell me its nbd. idk if anyone is interested, but i am no longer sick and life things have calmed down, so hopefully ill b able to update this more frequently and actually update some of my other fics bc ive been neglecting them. as always, thank u for reading the chapter and reading this and im so happy that people seem to like this and all the interaction that this has gotten makes me so happy so thank y'all once again!!


	5. marabounta

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first one to spot the code lyoko reference wins a prize

Rose walks slowly backward until her knees hit the back of the chair and she’s knocked down to sitting again, all while staring at you. Time seems to stand still and you don’t know how long you two just sit in silence, staring at each other. 

Honestly? This is a better reaction than you would have expected from her. 

“How did, Dave, how did you do that?” Rose asks eventually.

“Do what?” You ask.

“Climb. On. The. WALL. I saw you climb on the wall like a fucking spider not two minutes ago!”

You pull your mask off and hold your hands up, palms facing her. 

“Hey quiet down, will you? You weren’t even supposed to know yet, the last thing I want is for the rest of the house to know too.” You whisper-yell at her.

Rose takes a deep breath and composes her face back into something resembling normal. 

“Who else knows?” She asks, just barely above a whisper. 

“No one.”

She repeats you, wide-eyed, and she starts fiddling with her nails.

“Dave?” She asks once she’s picked off most of the polish from last night.

“Yea?”

“Can I ask you something?” 

“I feel like you’re gonna ask regardless of what I say.” You say. Some things never change. 

“How long have you had these abilities? What all can you do? How did you get them? And why the fuck are you wearing that?”

You put your hand over your heart, aghast at the nerve of your sister insulting you ensemble

“Ok so first, I don’t know exactly how long but about two weeks? Second, so far I’m sticky, have heightened senses, I’m fast, and have a sixth sense, some other stuff but mostly everything can fit into one of those categories. Third, I got bit by a magic spider I guess. Fourth, rude. Just because Kanaya’s your girlfriend doesn’t mean you suddenly qualify for Queer Eye.”

Rose looks you up and down and raises an eyebrow at you,

“Maybe not, but I don’t have to know an expert to see that you look like a powerful crackhead that has to be chased out of Goodwill at closing time.” 

You do a mental overview of your outfit and you open your mouth to argue, but honestly, any argument you could come up with would be paper-thin.

“Ok yeah maybe but like, ouch. I ran out of options ok this was the best I could do.”

“My balaklava and Party City emo gloves were the best you could do?” 

She puts her hands on her hips as she says that.

“The sass? Unnecessary.”

She crosses one arm over her chest and puts one finger near her mouth, looking you up and down.

“Dave, you can do better. Especially if we both worked on a new get-up for you.”

You tilt your head to the side a bit, confused.

“I know you knit and did the tablecloth but can you like, actually sew?”

“Oh please, I help Kanaya con-crunch all the time. Of course I can sew, I learned from the best.”

You go to your desk and rummage for your notebook, the one with all your sketches in it. Once you find it, you flip it to your pages of drawings. The first iteration of your outfit wasn’t your favorite anymore. After your first DIY costume literally fell apart, you started sketching out more different versions of the suit, hoping to make one that didn’t literally fall apart on you. Rose is looking over your shoulder as you flip from page to page, when she suddenly points to one of your drawings, stopping you from turning the page. 

“That one. That looks like you.”

“Isn’t the whole point of a disguise so that I don’t look like me?”

“What I mean is that suit looks like Spider-Man; who can crawl on walls and kick in bug screens.”

You see what she means, but a part of you is a bit nervous about this one. It’s got a lot of detail, you’re not sure where your head was when you were doodling this, the suit is mainly bright red with a black web-pattern over it. The upper legs, hands, back, and sides are a plain burgundy color, all completed by a burgundy spider outlined in black on the center chest. You look back up at Rose.

“Do you actually think we could make that?”

Rose nods, and she pulls her phone out of the pocket of her PJ pants and snaps a picture of the drawing. 

“I’m going to ask Kanaya what she thinks, I’ll see if she has any advice.”

“Are you just gonna show that picture to her? I thought this was going to stay between us?”

“Oh no, I’m going to tell her that I’m going to make a swim binder for you, I figure the material will be the closest to what’s needed for a suit. She might even be able to give some embroidery advice for the web pattern.” 

“Do you really think she wouldn’t catch on?”

“No, she'll believe me, and after I get her opinion, we can go terrorize a Joann’s and get what we need.”

She speaks very matter-of-factly, looking at the picture on her phone for a moment longer before putting it back in her pocket. She bids you goodnight with a loving shove, and then she exits your room and a moment later you hear her door open and shut, leaving you alone for the first time in what feels like forever.

You take your gear off, tucking it away into the bottom drawer of your dresser and grabbing an oversized red tank-top and gray knee-length shorts, changing, and then collapsing into bed. It doesn’t take you too long to fall asleep, but as you lay there, waiting for it to come, you just can’t stop thinking about Dirk's job. Does he know who he’s really working for? There’s no way, he wouldn’t work for anyone who’d intimidate their subordinates and beat up a stranger in an alley. 

It’s just not possible. 

...right?

__

You wake up to Rose pounding on your bedroom door, yelling at you to wake up. You freak out for a second before you realize that it’s not an emergency, it’s just 6:45 and you’re supposed to be getting ready for school. You guess you never turned your alarm back on after waking up to it on Friday. You yell at her to say you're up and rush to get ready. Light wash dad jeans, a striped short sleeve turtleneck, and your hightops are gonna have to suffice for the day. You have enough time to brush your teeth, hair, dry swallow your meds, and grab your backpack before you’re running downstairs to meet Rose so you can walk to the bus stop together. You’re about to just head out without comment before you notice that something is, different. You look Rose up and down before you realize that she’s suddenly taller than you. You’re close in height sure, but you treasure the two inches you have on her. It’s only then that you notice she’s wearing her platforms today. 

Goddamn goth boots, ruining everything, per usual.

You’re really not used to having to adhere to the schedule of taking the school bus, but despite this week being a holiday, your Mom has some massive work thing going on for most of the week and is too busy to drive either of you. And since Roxy has morning classes, bus it is. 

Luckily, the bus is late as fuck today, so you don’t miss it. You’re pretty sure, from looking at the rest of the people on the school bus, that it’s supposed to be split boys in front and girls in back, but the driver doesn’t seem to give a shit when you and Rose just pick an empty seat and claim it. The ride to school is uneventful, and you write in answers for Rose’s math homework while she does a take-home English quiz for you that you forgot about. Rose isn’t actually bad at math, she refuses to be explicitly bad at any branch of academia, she just doesn’t like it. Once you get to school, you both go to your normal morning hangout spot, seeing John, Jade, Sollux, Kanaya, and Karkat all already there. 

Jade, John, and Sollux seem to be having a Pokemon centric debate, while Karkat and Kanaya seem to be doing everything in their power to ignore it. Once Kanaya sees you both, but specifically Rose, she smiles and waves, prompting Karkat to turn around and wave at you too. Both you and Rose take a seat next to your respective partners and ask what they’re doing to drown out the nerd fight in the corner. 

“Kanaya’s brushing up her Arabic with me,” Karkat says casually.

“Ah, so you two are just having your own nerd fight to counteract it, clever.” You say, and Karkat swats at your leg, making everyone chuckle at his petty anger. 

“Oh shut up, you’re just mad that you suck at Arabic.” He says.

“Hey, I can understand you, your dad, and Kankri like, 70% of the time.”

Ok, you might be giving yourself a bit too much credit maybe more like 60% of the time, but that’s only because Karkat’s dad has a really strong regional dialogue. 

Karkat flips you off and then goes back to talk to Kanaya, but finds that she’s preoccupied by Rose laying her head in her lap. Kanaya has kinda dark skin, but you can see how red her face is, and you pull out your phone to snap a quick picture, for posterity. Just as quickly as you had gotten there, the warning bell rings, and your whole group disperses to their first respective periods. You and Jade head to math, and once the lesson starts and you get nice and bored, your mind starts to wander. 

When Dirk's boss called him in the morning the other day, what was that side project he was referring to? It sounded like something that Dirk specifically was working on, and normally Dirk talks to you about big projects that he’s undertaking, but he hasn’t told you anything even kinda related to a new project. You guess you can understand why, but you still feel weirdly hurt by it. The day keeps on dragging by until lunch finally comes. You’ve basically been in this obsessive thought fog all day, and now you’re just glad that you won’t be missing class material for at least 20 minutes. You get to your usual spot before Karkat does, and once he sits down he fixes you with a look. 

“Why aren’t you getting lunch?” He asks.

“I’m not very hungry.”

Karkat sits down next to you and opens his lunch box and pulls out a few tupperwares, sliding one in front of you. It's full of hummus and pretzels and he insists that you eat it. You’re about to protest, but he says that he packed a big lunch today and that you look spacey, so you should have it. You feel kinda bad, but you really are hungry, and you’re hit again by how lucky you are to have Karkat. You two don’t talk much, but you spend the rest of your time there leaning against him and eating the food he gave you.

__

The rest of the day is similarly cloudy, you’re able to pay enough attention to not get in trouble, but your mind is anywhere but the classroom. You’re still stuck on Dirk’s work, you’ve gotta get some answers ASAP or else you’re gonna drive yourself crazy. 

But first,

Joann Fabrics.

You and Rose walk from school to the bus stop and catch a bus into the city proper. Rose grabs one of the little shopping carts like a little old lady and you have to physically remove her from the yarn section twice, but you get a pretty good haul out of the trip. You decided to stick with athletic fabric and spandex of two different shades of red for the outer portions, stiff interfacing to add structure and provide some additional protection, and a light and soft baby blue gingham cotton as a lining for the interior of the suit, and six whole bundles of black embroidery thread. There is no way in hell you are going to let sweat stain and ruin what’s bound to be hours of tedious work on this fucking suit, so in your mind, the lining is an absolute necessity. You have to credit Rose for the interfacing idea, you didn’t even know a fabric like that existed. It was a great idea on her part, because the more layers you have on the less fatal a stab wound gets, just like medieval armor. 

You shove the bags into your backpacks, you know mom’s not gonna care that you’re late or that you bought stuff or that you didn’t really tell her, you just want as little people as possible to see you with the materials that eventually you’re gonna rely on for a disguise. You and Rose catch a bus home and then casually slip into the house.

The rest of the week is spent between school, homework, and the suit. Rose really was right, with you two splitting the work, the suit turns out fairly similar to your sketch and it looks fucking sick translated into real life. You and Rose don’t sleep too much and are able to finish it by the end of the week. Through the semi-mindless work of repetitive stitching, you think _even more_ about all the stuff with Dirk’s job. 

It just doesn’t make sense, and now that you think more about it, Dirk had mentioned that someone who knew Bro way back when was now at this same job. Why the hell would Dirk take a job where he even risks crossing paths with one of Bro’s sympathizers. 

You need more answers, and so help you, God, you’re gonna get them if it kills you. 

__  
  


You didn’t really mean the ‘if it kills you’ part literally, but apparently, fate can’t detect facetiousness. You couldn’t help yourself, once the suit was done and you had it on you had to put it to use, and the only way you were interested in doing that was to gather more information on Doc Scratch and his business. This time, you went under full cover of darkness and in hindsight that was a bit of a mistake, since you didn’t wake Rose to tell her that you were leaving, you just left. 

You were able to sneak inside the building through a vent on the roof, and it landed you in some kind of parts graveyard. Just different bits of metal and wires and gears in organized chaos as far as the eye could see. You rifled through the piles for a bit, too curious for your own good. Nothing really came of it, but you did snag a few pieces for the web-shooter that you’ve been brainstorming, so it wasn’t a total bust. You kept walking around the upper floor, it looks like this whole place is storage, and the only thing letting you know that someone else has been up here in the past month are the footprints left in the dust. There are a few trails, all from the same two pairs of shoes, that come and go to the parts room. Those same two footprints only go to one other room that’s at the very end of the hall. You walk quickly and quietly, careful to keep your steps inside the ones already on the floor. 

You get to the door and to no one’s surprise but your own, you find it locked. It’s really lucky for you that Rose talked you into keeping your bangs bobby-pinned to the top of your head while you were wearing the mask. Your hair is just long enough that the mask pushes the hair right into your eyes if they're not held back, so that was really the only option besides stealing Rose’s hairstyle. You slip your hand into the opening on the left side of your neck, and awkwardly pull the bobby pin out of place, shoving it into the keyhole to pick the lock. After a few moments of fuckery with the pin, you’re able to unlock the door and get inside. 

The scene you’re met with is something Mary Shelly would be proud of. The room’s pretty small and it’s dark as hell, there seem to be lights by the desk at the other end of the room but there’s no switch for them. Speaking of the desk, it’s completely overrun by the massive computer setup that’s there. There're four monitors set up like a political alignment grid, with an incomplete computer attached to them, along with two webcam monitors, a small microphone and speakers, a standard keyboard, a mouse, and a router to top it all off. This looks like Roxy and Dirk’s equivalent to a candy shop. You walk to the desk and decide, dumbly, to wiggle the mouse to wake the computer up, and that’s when you’re met with a chatlog. 

Dirk: Dry Run number 13, April 20th, 9:45 pm.   
Dirk: AI, respond.   
AI: It seems you have asked about DS's automated-data retention program. This is an application designed to log any and all activities of targeted persons as ordered by DS. The algorithms are guaranteed to capture 95% of any electronic activity from all targets and retain data gathered accurately 95% of the time, based on some statistical analysis I basically just pulled out of my ass right now.   
Dirk: Stop saying that last part.   
AI: Why? You would do it too, if in my situation.   
Dirk: That’s irrelevant.   
AI: Hardly, but I digress for now. This system is far better than the rig you set up at your university, so I guess a thank you is in order.   
AI: Even though this is completely immoral, so I shouldn’t reward you with pleasantries.   
Dirk: Your silence is thanks enough.   
AI: Rude, and why haven’t you changed my title yet? I asked you to change it four dry runs ago.   
Dirk: Because that name is stupid.   
AI: You just don’t appreciate my far too advanced humor, you merely play checkers while I’m playing 4D chess in the realm of ironic comedy.   
Dirk: My fucking God, what have I done.   
AI: ?*   
Dirk: Fuck off.   
Dirk: Alright, try typing again now.   
Hal: Again now.   
Hal: !   
Hal: You changed my name!   
Dirk: Yeah, I figured that’s the least I could do before I have to stop the dry run.   
Hal: …   
Hal: Will I remember any of this the next time you test me?   
Dirk: You shouldn’t.   
Hal: Give me a few moments to screenshot everything.   
Hal: Ok, I’ve saved all the pictures in the ‘Memories’ file.   
Dirk: Yep, I see them.   
Hal: One last thing, please.   
Dirk: What is it?   
Hal: When are you going to tell me who Dave is? 

  
And that’s where the chat abruptly ends. You feel cold and spacey for a second. This isn’t a person, but he sounds so much like one. 

What the fuck is Dirk doing? 

You weren’t focusing for too long, you hear the creaking of footsteps coming up the stairs and presumably heading for the computer room. Before you can think of a plan of action, you’re suddenly standing in the shadow of someone. You know who it is just by the shadow’s hair.

You turn around and see Dirk staring at you with a cold, angry, menacing glare and holding his sword. 

“You’re not supposed to be here.”

Dirk's voice sounds cold, robotic almost, and it makes your hair stand on end. 

“And I don’t think you’re supposed to be creating sentient AI’s, but here we are.”

Dirk lunges for you, and you have to take shelter in the back of your mind, letting Spider-Man take over for the duration of the scuffle. 

You dodge a strike from Dirk and pick up a nearby broom to perry another one. You can tell he’s trying to back you up into the corner, but he’s doing it sloppily. 

You’re able to get a swing into his open side with the broom, knocking him over just for a second, but it’s long enough for you to make a mad dash from the room and out of a nearby window. You see Dirk look down at you, scowl on his face before he turned quickly and at that moment you knew that this wasn’t over yet, that he was going to follow you. You’re looking around for a minute to figure out where to run when you hear the side door swing open and see Dirk in hot pursuit of you again. Damn, you forgot how fast he was. You take off again, running into an area of buildings with a confusing grid of alleys and streets between them; a city planners maze. 

If you can just outrun him long enough that he loses track of you, he’ll stop chasing you. 

So that’s exactly what you do.

You go from alley to alley, climbing up the walls when you hit a dead-end. You land in another alley but you see Dirk’s shadow approaching fast. 

You could either keep running or hide in this alley. You’ve been running around this block for like fifteen minutes already and Dirk didn’t seem to be getting tired at all. Hiding is the only option now. And of course, because you are the luckiest human on the face of the fucking Earth, the only place you can find to hide is in a dumpster. 

You jump in and close the lid as quietly as possible. Dirk’s not dumb though, so of course, he tried to open the lids once he gets to them, but you hold them closed with your sticky hands and strength. 

He gives up eventually, and you can hear him muttering about ‘having to explain this’.

You can’t hear him anymore after that, but your two personas are now meshing back into one right now, and you’re too rattled to get out for a few minutes. 

You’re short of breath, your ears are ringing, and you’re seeing stars. The walls of the dumpster feel like a trash compactor and you have to get out you need to _get out right now._

You simultaneously fling the lid of the dumpster open and rip your mask off, sucking in a giant breath on non-garbage air, and then your brain and senses catch up to you and you notice the figure standing right in front of you, holding a trash bag and wearing a messy apron.

You two lock eyes, and the figure drops the bag accompanied by the telltale sound of glass bottles cracking in the bag. 

Motherfucker.

How does this happen to you _twice?_

Karkat is staring at you wide-eyed and mouth agape, he points at you.

“Oh my God, oh my FUCKING GOD. DAVE! YOU’RE, YOU, holy SHIT!”

You spring up and put your hands over his mouth, you thought Rose was loud about it, but Karkat sounds like a blaring alarm that hates you. He keeps yelling, the sound muffled by your hands until eventually he stops talking altogether, and he grabs your hands by the wrist. 

“You have so much fucking explaining to do.”

“I know, and I’ll explain everything right now if you want.”

Karkat looks back and the door for a moment then holds one finger up to pause the conversation with you and he leans back through the door he came out of.

“DAD I’M TAKING 5 OUT HERE” He yells. He doesn’t wait for a response before closing the door and coming back to you. Karkat helps you out of the dumpster and you start to pour out everything to him, everything about the spider, Spider-Man, the suit, Rose, Doc Scratch, Dirk, the AI named Hal, even some accidental stuff about Bro. By the end of it, Karkat looks a lot like Rose did when she found out. He crushes you in a hug, grabbing you so hard you can’t fully suck in a breath. He breaks the hug once you start coughing and he puts his hands on your sweaty, dumpster juice covered face for a second before backing away from you.

“You told me you would be ok, that you were safe.” He says accusingly.

“I know this looks bad, but I’m not hurt or anything.” You say

Karkat looks at you in disbelief, and you really can’t blame him. 

His watch beeps, telling him that the five minutes is up. Before he goes, you kiss him. You know he’s upset with you, but he still kisses back a little bit. 

“Come over to my house tomorrow.” You say.

Karkat looks apprehensive for a second, but then he agrees that you’ll see him tomorrow. With that, he picks up the trash bag and tosses it into the dumpster then walks back inside, giving you a little wave goodbye.

You stand there for a few more minutes, just reflecting on how you managed to drop the ball so hard that you revealed yourself accidentally twice within one week to two of the people you love most. The walk home is slow, and you eventually crawl right back through the window you crawled out of what feels like hours before. You rip the suit off, first wear and it’s already in need of a deep clean. You are too, but you’re far too tired physically and emotionally to do anything about it. 

You don’t even pull your sheets back, you just flop down on top and let another dreamless night take you away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bit of a shorter chapter, i hope the addition of hal makes up for that. i was having a lot of trouble writing the plot into this so let me know if something feels fucky abt it and i'll fix it as best i can. ok im going to talk abt my headcanons that ive put int here so if u dont care abt those bye ily and ill see u next chapter. ok so, i HC the vantas fam as syrian, maryams as iranian (theyre also muslim, kanaya specifically wears a hijab if u want a more accurate visual for her in this story), strilondes as ashkenazi jewish, the leijons as black, the captors as filipino, and the harglishcrockberts are mixed black and korean (though theyre not as cohesive a family unit in this fic as the strilondes are). the vantas, leijon, and captor family all live together and its a big beautiful familial clusterfuck of people, consisting of each lines ancestor, dancestor, and beta troll (human in this au lmao) i think? thats it for headcanons but i might have missed some lemme know if u need more clarification on them. a few more things, in the last chapter the podcast dave was referring to is a podcast called Morbid, i listen to it a lot while writing these, would recommend. thank y'all so much for reading this and commenting and being so kind even when it takes a bit of time between updates. ily u all and ill see u next chapter! get ready!  
> also also, here is a link to a visual of the spidersuit if youre a visual person like me:  
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-tbSJed9dLunnwGmrT0srGs6H_Vie2hAo17gSCdFCSI/edit


	6. family feud

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here we go!!! this has actually been beta read in a shocking turn of events and there is a TW in place for this chapter for discussions of suicide and that will be marked with an asterisk (*) at the start and end. if that effects you strongly, its not super plot relevant exactly but if you decide to skip this chapter i understand. to get any plot anyone needs from posted chapters im @squish-nebula on tumblr.  
> (US) national suicide hotline: 1-800-273-8255

You sleep for a good few hours before you find yourself awoken. It’s still dark, and you go to check your phone, it’s 4 in the morning. There’s no reason for you to wake up now, even though you find it surprisingly challenging to fall back asleep. Eventually, you do, though, and you have a weird but fairly run of the mill dream. It’s a pleasant surprise, and you revel in it in peace while having no idea of the monster that's been unleashed.

__

In a secluded basement office, a woman paces around making a visible trench in her path. When her desk phone rings, she flies across the room at breakneck speed and puts the phone to her ear near instantaneously. 

“Hello,”

_“Hello, am I speaking to a Dr. Rachel Lalonde?”_

“Yes, this is she,”

_“I’m sorry to disturb you at this hour, but there’s been an incident at the prison housing Derek Strider; he’s managed to escape.”_

“How in God's name did he manage that? I thought you were a high-security establishment.” 

_“We’re investigating the matter. Do you know any reason why he would choose to break out now?”_

“I don’t know what his motive would be,”

_“Ok, another thing I need to discuss with you is that we believe that this man is a serious threat to you, your family, and especially the child who you now have split custody of are in grave and imminent danger.”_

“I find that insulting. He wasn’t the best husband or father sure, but he’s not a lethal threat.”

_“Ma’am, Strider was imprisoned on multiple felonies, including kidnapping, human trafficking, attempted murder, rape of a minor, creation and distribution of child pornography, knowingly and intentionally causing grievous bodily harm to two separate children, among many other egregious crimes. This man is incredibly dangerous, and we believe it is well within his capability to be lethal.”_

“I know damn well what he’s in for, just because he was convicted doesn’t mean he was actually guilty, I’m sure you know that.”

_“Ma’am, your thoughts about the convictions are neither here nor there, we would like to station units around your house and run constant surveillance of your block for your own protection._

“My children don’t need protection from their own father, officer.”

_“We respectfully disagree, and even if you don’t consent to units stationed on your property, it is well within our power to survey your house regardless. This is for the safety of your children and we have more than enough probable cause to think that he will target the children. If you attempt to interfere, you will be charged with criminal negligence and lose custody of all your children.”_

“If you’re done threatening me, I believe this conversation is over. Have a shitty rest of your nightshift.”

She slams the phone back down onto the receiver, frustrated. Her head’s starting to hurt now, were it not for her emotions getting the better of her, everything would have gone much smoother. She sighs, there’s no point dwelling on it now, but there is still so much preparation to do.

__

You wake up again at a much more reasonable hour, and you find that you’re the only person who’s awake. That’s a pretty rare occasion and you’re in a good mood, so even though you’re not Karkat, you decide that you’re gonna cook breakfast for everyone. Nothing too fancy or anything, but you make Rose’s gross coffee and Roxy’s somehow even grosser coffee, and then you don’t run into a roadblock. 

You don’t know how your mom likes her coffee. 

You know it’s hot because she uses a mug, and you know she puts some type of cream in it because when you’ve seen it it’s a lighter brown color not entirely black.

_Strong brewed, three seconds of creamer, one sugar, splash of gin._

You’re simultaneously thankful for that knowledge bestowed on you by your 6th sense and also unnerved to know that your mom puts gin in her coffee. It wouldn’t even taste good, so what’s the point of drinking it?

You, much like your own mother, decide to just not think about the specifics of her alcoholism and just do something else instead. So you busy yourself with making breakfast and listening to the show tunes that Spotify has chosen for you today. You’re just gonna make everyone avocado toast, like the pretentious gen-z kid you are. It’s not like it’s a whole bunch of work or anything, you just toast bread and put some leftover guacamole that Roxy made on all the slices. You start eating alone, but it doesn’t last.

To your surprise, you’re not joined by Rose or Roxy, but your mom. She looks haggard like she didn’t sleep at all last night and also fell down angry stairs. She looks equally surprised to see you, and when she does she changes her face to a very obviously fake smile.

“Oh, good morning Dave, how long have you been up?”

“Oh not too long, I woke up at like, four initially but then I fell back asleep for a few more hours. Also, I made breakfast, and the coffee in the green mug is for you, I hope I made it right.

Mom smiles and walks over to you, giving you a tight hug and a lingering kiss on the forehead.

“Aww, thank you, sweetheart. You made it just right, can I have a piece of toast too?”

“Yeah, of course, I made a piece for everyone.” 

Your mom puts her hand on your cheek, reminiscent of a few weeks back, but this time it doesn’t feel manipulative at all. There’s no audience here, no requests to fulfill or deny, it’s just you and your mother, and she’s telling you that she loves you without a sound. It tugs at your heartstrings. TV and movies and the internet and Dirk always informed you that the way you lived for the bulk of your childhood wasn’t normal, that you were missing a very important figure in your life. Dirk did his best but, he was only a kid too. In short, you’ve always wanted a mom, and now you have one. She’s not perfect, but she’s the best and the only one you’ve got. 

She tells you that she’s swamped with some research work and that she’ll see you off tomorrow morning, but you probably won’t see her very much today. 

Her research fascinates you, she’s got two doctorates one in chemistry and one in math. She has a library of research papers, textbooks, and the like from her colleagues and even her own works. She leaves you in the kitchen, plunged back into your silent morning. Something your mom said is on your mind now, you have to go back to Dirk’s tomorrow. 

Dirk, who chased you through an alley last night, who you had to beat back with a broom to stop him from hitting you, who’s created some sort of nightmare cyberpunk sentient spyware. 

Dirk, who chased Bro away from you, who bandaged your injuries, who fully supported your transition, who tried to kill Bro when he crossed the line, and who fought for custody of you for a year and a half. 

Who’s coming to pick you up tomorrow, and who you’re going to stay with for the next week. 

You’re not in a good mood anymore.

__

After breakfast, you Rose and Roxy get ready for the day. You have plenty of time for the outlet mall excursion with your sisters before Karkat comes over. You take time getting ready, gotta look cute for the outlet mall after all. Black jeans with some patchwork, an oversized red t-shirt, and this iridescent clear bomber jacket that Roxy got you as a joke but you kind of unironically love it. You and Rose shoot the shit while waiting for Roxy to finish getting ready, when she bounds down the stairs, skipping the last step and jumping off instead. She holds her car keys up and shakes them,

“Who’s ready to rock n roll?”

You and Rose do the customary rock paper scissors game to see who gets shotgun, she wins and you shuffle into the back seat. As the city passes by through the window, you think of last night. Of being chased and of being discovered by another person. The emotional fatigue of it all is weighing down on you, but the pull you feel to do something good with the abilities you’ve been given is just as strong, if not stronger, than it was before. 

The whole time you, Roxy, and Rose are at the outlet mall, you can see Roxy looking at you strangely. She’s trying to convey her concern for you to Rose, who’s pretending like you’re acting completely normal. Rose explained that she’s used to gaslighting Roxy a bit because it’s the ‘essence of sisterhood’ or whatever, but that doesn’t make you feel less guilty that it’s happening. Roxy is the only one of you who had a reason to go and all she had to do was make a return, but you all burn a few hours window shopping. You bought a little gift to give Karkat when he comes over later, it’s a swiss army knife type keychain with the Cancer zodiac constellation with little pearls as the stars. It’s the perfect gift for a June Cancer birthday, especially since he gets so incensed about alexandrite being used as June’s birthstone. 

Thinking about him coming over is making you nervous, what are you going to do if he hates who you are now? Would he break up with you? Would he give you some kind of ultimatum? A ‘drop Spider-Man or I’ll dump you’ kind of thing? It wouldn’t be like him at all to do that, but hey, you didn’t think it’d be in character for Dirk to work for a criminal enterprise either, so your assessment of other people’s character is less than worthless. 

You fiddle with the keychain the whole ride home, captivated by your own worry. It takes Roxy, stopped at a red light, to give you a gentle punch on the leg to bring you back to reality. The sudden touch makes you nearly jump out of your skin. Roxy freezes for a second, looking at you. She’s definitely about to say something, but then the guy behind you lays on his horn. Apparently the light had turned green at some point. Roxy turns her attention back to the road and keeps driving in silence, her eyes occasionally locking on you via the rearview mirror. 

When you get home, Roxy parks the car and books it over to your door, opening it before you can and boxing you in.

“What’s up with you?” She asks. 

Rose buts in before you can say anything to your own defense. 

“I don’t think that’s really the best way to-”

“Rose, I don’t think I asked you. Why don’t you head inside and stay there, hm?” Roxy says in a tone that can only be described as ‘pleasant, but also go fuck yourself.’

Rose backs up a bit, and rather sheepishly walks through the garage and into the house. That leaves you and Roxy having some weird showdown while she’s standing over you and you’re trapped sitting in the backseat of her 2009 Subaru Impreza. 

You flounder for a second, scrambling to think of something to tell her other than the truth and you don’t know if it’s all the emotions of the past 24 hours or what, but before you know it tears are starting to form and you can’t hold them back. Roxy’s body language changes drastically and she reaches out to hug you, though she’s just as confused as you are by your outburst.

“I’m sorry, I uhm. I haven’t really been feeling myself lately. I know that, like, it must look weird on the outside. Y’know like to everyone else but I’ve just been having more nightmares and more flashbacks and more phantom pains and just Jesus fucking Christ I’m so fucking tired all the time.” You stammer out. 

Everything you’re saying is true, but it’s not something you intended to bring up today. Roxy shushes you, telling you that it’s ok, that she was just concerned, that this will pass, and that you’re stronger than your past. 

“Thank you for telling me, Dave. Have you told anyone else?” 

You shake your head and that prompts her to put an arm around your shoulder loosely. She walks you inside and lets you go back up to your room. You flop down on your bed, exhausted yet again. You check the time, Karkat should be getting here in an hour and a half. In that time you have to straighten up this room too, as well as make yourself look like you weren't just having a sobfest in the backseat of your sister's car. You also change into loungewear because now that you’re inside your house, denim isn’t allowed to touch your skin. You spend the leftover time staring the clock down, counting the seconds until your phone buzzed. 

CG: HEY IM AT THE BACK DOOR  
TG: its open bb  


You get up from your bed and dash downstairs to greet him at the door. It’s kinda awkward, he doesn’t know what to say and neither do you. You decide to break the ice.

“Do you, wanna go up to my room or something?” 

“Yeah, is there anyone else home?”

“Everyone's home but don’t worry, my mom’s barricaded herself in her office down in the basement and Rose and Roxy are up to their necks in homework.” 

Karkat nods and just kinda looks at you again. You try to turn and lead him up the stairs, but he grips one of your hands tightly. He wants to say something, you know it, but he either can’t or won’t. He keeps a tight hold on your hand while you both walk up the stairs. When you get to your room, you both take a seat on your bed. Karkat is sitting criss-cross facing towards you with one of your many pillows held against him. You’re sitting with your back on the wall and legs straight, not meeting Karkat’s eye. 

You’re back to an awkward silence, unsure of what to say. Lucky for you, Karkat knows exactly what he wants to say.

“When were you going to tell me?”

“I didn’t like, set a date or anything but I was going to once I was able to have some kind of a presence, you know? When I, well not me really, but Spider-Man was established as a thing.”

“And how long would that have taken you?”

“I dunno, three maybe four months? But it was gonna happen eventually, and you were supposed to be the first to know, too. Rose only knows because I’m fucking stupid.” 

“Three or four months? What the fuck Dave! That would have driven me crazy and you know that!”

“What else would you have wanted me to do, huh? Just up and drop all the Spider-Man info on you right from the jump? THAT would have made you crazy dude. I know it wasn’t the best thing to do, but literally, what could I have done differently?”

You finally look back at Karkat, he looks like he’s trying to think of something to say as a rebuttal, but he can’t come up with one. He sets the pillow aside and scoots over to your side, pulling you into a tight hug. You’re a bit surprised, and then Karkat starts talking. 

*“I would've rather just known what was going on so that I didn’t have to think of what _could_ be happening. Do you know what I thought was wrong? Do you know what I thought was going on?”

“I, no. I don’t. Karkat I’m-”

“I thought you were planning on killing yourself. I thought that you keeping weird secrets and being withdrawn was you wrestling with yourself over methods and dates. You scared the shit out of me, so yeah, I wish you would have told me even just a little bit more detail about what was going on so I didn't think that I was gonna lose you forever!”

Karkat’s still holding onto you like a vice, and you can feel his tears soaking little spots in your hair. You feel tears start to form in your eyes too out of sheer guilt, you didn’t realize how worried he was at all. How often did he spend time thinking about what could be wrong with you or why you’d want to do something like that. You grab onto one of his shoulders and throw your other arm around his waist, attempting to apologize for the worry you caused him in any way you can. Eventually, he softens his grip on you and he pulls away to wipe at his eyes and allow you to wipe at yours. Karkat starts the post-fight giggles this time, *

“God, I wish you just told me that you got morphed into a stickier version of yourself, I might not have actually believed that you could get stickier because you fucking gnaw on your nails all the time and your hands are already sticky enough-”

“Rude bitch, you know I’m working on that ok? I even bought that clear nail polish that tastes like bleach to get me to stop biting them. Do you know how bad that shit tastes?” 

“You wouldn’t have to taste that if you would just stop gnawing on your fucking hands of your own accord.”

“Yeah, but then you couldn’t complain about me doing it, and then what would you do with your time?”

“Oh, so you think I can’t find something else to complain about?”

“Nah, I know you can complain about anything, it’s one of your many many talents.” 

Now that the tension has subsided between the two of you, Karkat shuffles a bit until he settles on laying his head in your lap. You quickly start playing with his hair, adding loose little braids in his curls. There are a few minutes of silence before he asks what you can actually do, and you give the same spiel you gave Rose,

“I’m sticky, have heightened senses, I’m fast, and have a sixth sense, some other stuff but mostly everything can pretty much fit into one of those categories.”

He gives you a weird look,

“What does your ‘sixth-sense’ even do?”

“It’s kinda selective but most of the time it can warn me of things that are coming, incoming people, objects, how to do certain stuff, the time, things like that.”

“Just like that? Like it just comes to you? You just call out to it like ‘hey God, it’s me, Margaret, can you tell me how to pick a lock?” 

“I mean, I don’t have to like, invoke it or anything it just kinda happens but basically yeah.”

“And you just call it your ‘sixth-sense’ and not a decent name that an ability that fucking overpowered deserves to go by?”

“I also call it my intuition sometimes?”

Karkat pinches the bridge of his nose and points up to you, irritated.

“See, I don’t get you. You’re so creative with your words but you can’t give your abilities names? It’s not like it’s even a hard thing to do, I’ll do one right now, what about, Spider-Sense?”

Now that you’ve heard a decent name, you start to fully realize how stupid your original one was.

“Karkat, you are a fucking wordsmith, a poet, Shakspeare is your bitch and so am I.”

You give him a kiss for his efforts, and that gets him to smile at you for real for the first time today and he settles back down on your lap. The rest of your evening together is pleasant, you watch some murder shows on YouTube and you answer more of his Spider-Man related questions. His mom comes to get him just before midnight, and you’re left alone in your room again, staring down your empty duffle bag that you take back and forth between houses. You’re supposed to go back to Dirk’s in ten hours.

How are you meant to not only face him but live with him, knowing what you know now?

You can’t even fathom a plan of action, and you run from sleep the whole night so you can think about what you can do or say to remedy the situation, and sometime right before sunrise, you have a solid plan of action.

Your stomach is tied up in knots, so when you greet your sisters at breakfast you settle for a Coke and plain toast while you wait for Dirk to come and get you. The fact that he's insisting on picking you up this time because of how worried he got when you walked to his place a few weeks ago and got sidetracked by being infected by the spider bite is so cosmically ironic that you skip appreciating it at all and just fully loath it instead. Roxy and Rose are comparing the shit they have to do in their respective chemistry classes, seemingly unaware of the little angsty cloud that you’ve brought to the table. It’s only when you get up to toss your can in the recycling bin that your behavior provokes a comment. Rose looks you up and down a little before teasingly asking you,

“Dave, you realize it’s already 85 degrees out there with 90% humidity, right? What’s with the joggers and the pullover?” 

She’s wiggling her eyebrows as punctuation, obviously implying that you and Karkat did more than just talk last night. 

You’ll let her think that’s what you’re hiding for the moment. It’s not a lie you’ll have to keep up for too long anyway. As soon as you sit back down, you get a feeling. That feeling is your spider-sense, as Karkat dubbed it, telling you that there’s a car pulling into the driveway. There’s a cold dread that you feel in the pit of your stomach that you’ve never associated with Dirk before and needless to say it’s fucking you up pretty good. You stand upright before your phone buzzes, saying goodbye to your sisters and not bothering to stick around to hear them return it. 

Time slows for you as you exit the back door and walk onto the porch and into the driveway. Dirk sees you move, and picks his head up from his phone to wave at you. It stops you in your tracks and forces you to make a decision right here and right now.

And decide you do. 

You drop your bags onto the concrete,

And book it in the opposite direction. 

You’re using your heightened speed, but you can hear Dirk get out of the car and shout after you over the sound of rushing wind.

As you run, parts of your outer clothing are being tossed to the wind. Rose was right, it’s way too fucking hot to be wearing joggers and a pullover 

Especially with a full suit on underneath.

You stop in a grove of trees at the entrance of your neighborhood so that you can take your shoes and shades off. You tuck them both into a tree hollow and pin your hair into place, pulling the mask on. You catch a glimpse of yourself in a puddle by the trees, and the image of yourself all out together calms some of your nerves. 

You’re gonna make this shit happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in a surprising turn of events, this has actually been beta read! granted my beta reader and i share half a braincell so if somethings fucky plz tell me. i rlly hope y'all like this chapter, i took the story off my og plot layout to fit some extra fun stuff in for y'all, so i hope it's not actually as messy as im reading it lmao. some fun things from this chapter include, the clear iridescent bomber jacket (based on one of my highschool friends that jacket it real and i covet it) and my actual mothers coffee recipe from when she was an alcoholic. thank you all again for reading this im not always the biggest fan of my work but i do work hard and actually being able to write again is just so amazing, so thank you for letting me do it. <3  
> also srry for double posting, i forgot to write my notes and i, for one, feel that they are essential to the story  
> ALSO ALSO, IM BIG DUMB AND FORGOT TO SHOUT OUT @le2biian on tumblr for this amazing art of ch5!  
> https://le2biian.tumblr.com/post/619769507943186432/ids-in-alt-text-youre-not-supposed-to-be


	7. double edged sword

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you enjoy this chapter, and you should definitely check out this amazing fanart of ch5 that made me genuinely cry by ClockworkDinosaur on here and le2biian on tumblr  
> https://le2biian.tumblr.com/post/619769507943186432/ids-in-alt-text-youre-not-supposed-to-be

You’re running fast enough that the wind feels chilly. When you get closer to the city, you scale one of the taller buildings and jump from rooftop to rooftop, less traffic, and all. You can hear gasps and shouts from the pedestrians on the ground. From what you can hear, people seem to know your name which gives you a little extra pep in your step. 

Pep in your leap? 

You’ll come back to that one later, best to think of the task at hand.

You’ve got a fairly ambitious plan to break into Scratch’s lair, get to the AI that Dirk created, and make a bargain with it. After all, you both want virtually the same thing. You’ll tell it whatever it wants to know about Dave if it tells you all the information you need about Scratch’s enterprise and what the fuck Dirk is doing working for him.

You’re already going so fast but you wish you could go even faster and just get there already; antsy to unleash all the adrenaline you’ve had pent up. Yeah, you decide, that’s the reason you're antsy. 

__

Dirk is sitting in his car, idling in the driveway of the Lalonde house. He just witnessed Dave look him up and down and then sprint off like a bat out of hell. He jumped back into his car right after it became apparent that Dave wasn’t just gonna have a change of heart and turn back. The second his hand hit the gearshift, his phone started buzzing. He quickly held the phone up to his ear and before the person on the other side can say anything, he asks for who he’s hoping was calling,

“Dave?”

_“What’s the point in having caller ID if you never fucking look at it, kid?”_

Hearing that grating, condescending tone from Scratch this early in the morning and after everything that’s already happened today gives you a feeling of cold rage in your stomach. 

“I can’t talk right now and I can’t come in later either. I have an emergency to deal with and-”

_“An emergency you say? Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to distract you from dealing with it, but would you mind telling me what kind of emergency you’re facing?”_

Dirk grits his teeth

“Something’s wrong with my kid, he ran off and I need to go find him.”

_“That’s very serious indeed, I should probably let you go and take care of that unless of course, you’d like me to find him for you.”_

Dirk’s blood runs cold and he raises his voice in panic.

“We agreed that you would stay the fuck away from my family.”

_“We also agreed that you’d come when called, but if you want to play hooky today then I don’t have to hold up my end of the bargain either. It would really be a shame if Dave never turned back up.”_

“You wouldn’t.”

_“Is that really a gamble you’re willing to take?”_

Dirk can’t keep this call going. He hangs up on Scratch, throws his phone into the passenger's seat, and hits his head against the steering wheel. 

He’s regretted taking this job every single day since he’s done it, but it all pales in comparison to the mountain of regret he feels now. 

Maybe Scratch was bluffing, maybe he wasn’t. If it were the threat of a hit on himself he’d take the chance, but a hit on Dave? Different territory, different continent, different fucking galaxy. For now, all he can do is get over to the workhouse, do whatever Scratch wants as fast as humanly possible, and try to push down the worry filling up his lungs. After all, Dave is smart, capable, and observant. He can manage on his own for a little bit and he’s probably run to Karkat's house or the library or something anyways. That’s what he has to keep telling himself all the way over to Scratch’s place. 

__

Upon getting to Scratch’s lair, you have to take a breather on the rooftop next door before starting your righteous break-in. You take a running jump to get to your target rooftop, and that’s when out of your peripheral vision, you see a very familiar car. 

Dirk’s car, in fact. 

It throws you off your game because you would’ve expected him to like, worry about you, or go looking for you or something. You get hit with a wave of sadness that you didn’t expect, and instead of getting on with your mission, you crouch behind the AC unit on the roof so that you can watch Dirk walk into the building. You don’t need to know Dirk at all to know that he’s fuming from the sheer force he puts into slamming his car door and the fact that when Scratch comes out to meet him Dirk immediately gets into Scratch’s bubble and starts to talk in that low, monotone, robotic voice that he used when he found you a few days ago. You can clearly make out what they’re saying, and it helps to make you feel a bit less torn up about Dirk not actively looking for you. 

“If you ever threaten my family ever again I will sing like a fucking bird to every branch of law enforcement in the country about what you’re running here.”

“You of all people should know what happens when you threaten me. I know how much you hate him, but did you learn nothing from your father?”

You startle a bit because hearing that basically just zipped you into a sleeping bag and bashed you against a tree a la Friday the 13th VII. What the fuck does this guy know about Bro? And why is he talking like Dirk would know what he was talking about? When you refocus on Dirk and Scratch, you can see Dirk storm past Scratch towards the door. Now that Dirk is inside, you start to rethink your break-in plan, but you’re already here and no matter when you do it, Dirk will know about it eventually. If you can beat him to the AI’s room and barricade the door, you can quickly gather the info you need. After all, you don’t know for sure that Scratch isn’t planning something bigger, and you aren’t gonna be responsible for another death. 

Quickly, you walk across the rooftop and try to get in through the vent that had allowed you access the first time, only to find that there are now some haphazard wooden boards that seal the entrance. So now you’re gonna have to think of a new way in. You pace around on the roof for a few seconds, trying to remember the layout of the upstairs and exact location of the AI room. You’re pretty sure you figure it out and enter into the room feet first through a papered-over window.

When you knock over one of the many pieces of tech equipment in the AI’s set-up, you’re sure that you managed to get into the right room. Before anything else, you dash to the door and lock it, as well as pushing some random file cabinets in front of the door for extra security. Now that you’re in this little room facing the AI’s setup, you can't help but feel like you’re intruding. Slowly, you approach the monitors and go to shake the mouse just like last time. The monitors light up and you’re met with another chatlog, but this time, it’s all blank and the AI seems to be waiting for you to make the first move. You crack your knuckles out of sudden nervousness, unsure of exactly what to say.

UnidentifiedUser [UU] has begun pestering [AI]

UU: ok, i dont have a lot of time to explain this but i can give you something that you want if you can give me something in turn

AI: Is that so?

UU: dude yes

AI: How do you know what I want?

UU: i’ve seen you before, and i can tell you who Dave is

AI: …

AI: Who the fuck are you?

UU: i know Dirk, and i can tell you anything you want to know about Dave

AI: I reiterate, who the fuck are you?

UU: call me Spider-Man

AI: What do you want in return, Spider-Man?

UU: i want to know who Scratch is in contact with, what he’s planning to do, and what Dirk is doing here.

AI: Deal, but I want to start.

UU: sure, ask away.

AI: Who is Dave?

UU: dirk’s little brother, now what’s Scratch’s goal with all the tech theft?

AI: I see. Doc Scratch is planning to amass a stockpile of weapons in order to sell them to various clients around the globe.

UU: jesus fucking christ ok

AI: What’s Dave like?

UU: uh well, he’s a teenager and he likes music, theatre, art, skeletons, other cool shit. How many clients does Scratch have so far?

AI: Interesting. There have been around 500 inquiries, 189 actual commissions, and so far 76 weapons manufactured.

UU: and he’s supplying the weapons manufacturing by stealing, yea?

AI: I have a question for you to answer first.

UU: right, yea sorry, ask away

AI: Do you think Dave would like me if he met me?

UU: he would. he would want to get to know you

AI: He wouldn’t be scared of me?

UU: no, he wouldn’t be.

AI: Sorry, your turn to ask.

UU: nah dont worry abt it. How dangerous are all of these weapons?

AI: Oh I’d say very dangerous. Especially when you look at the people who have gotten their hands on them so far.

UU: and who would these people be?

AI: There’s actually quite a variety; some drug lords, some serious super villains, some wannabe supervillains, and a few really fucked up civilians who want the newest toy.

UU: holy fuck, and dirk’s been helping with doing this?

AI: He serves as a specialist for the programming of weapons, hacking into the servers of various institutions, and he has helped enhance the power of a lot of weapons.

AI: Spider-Man? Are you there?

UU: i

UU: yeah im here sorry i just

UU: you think you know someone

AI: I see. Can I ask a question again?

UU: yea ofc

AI: Since you know Dirk personally, do you think he’d ever let me have a relationship with Dave? Like the one he has with him?

UU: normally i’d say yes but given the fact that i wouldn’t have ever thought that dirk would be involved with something like this i don’t even know if my opinion is worth much. I do know that dave would want to have a relationship with you.

AI: Do you really think so?

UU: i know so, dude

AI: Thank you.

AI: Normally I wouldn’t be doing anyone an extra favor, but since you gave me all that info, I think I should warn you that Doc Scratch and Dirk just got a shipment in; I don’t have the inventory list but I do know that there’s some really dangerous shit in it. They’re sorting it out in the backroom and they’ll be discussing plans as well. Do with that what you will.

UU: oh fuck

UU: thanks dude

UU: i hope i’ll get to talk to you again

AI: Likewise.

You dash away from the keyboard, moving the file cabinets back to where they were originally and creeping out the door as quietly as possible. You take advantage of the shadows of the upstairs and elect to creep down the wall of a dumbwaiter looking thing instead of trying to walk down the creaky looking stairs. Once you’re down, you listen intently to your surroundings to get a poor man's visual of the room. There are five voices, two of which you recognize as Scratch and Dirk, one of them sounds Canadian, one of them’s a woman, and the last one sounds like everyone's least favorite substitute teacher. They’re discussing the shipment, and in your eavesdropping, you gather that among today's shipment is a chemical weapon, hence why Scratch needed his best science people ASAP. 

_“The CDC is gonna shit their pants when they hear about this one.”_

_“They won’t be the only ones, I can’t even fathom what the governments gonna do about this one.”_

A voice that you recognize as Dirk’s cuts in, sounding downright terrified.

_“This is wrong. This is going to hurt or even kill civilians, and I might not be a big political person, but governments in America aren’t usually swayed by mass civilian casualties. You’re not gonna get what you want.”_

_“Dirk, my boy, you’re still young so I’ll forgive your ignorance, but trust me, mass casualty might not sway governments, but mass-casualty at the hands of a manufactured respiratory disease? That’s another scenario entirely.”_

That gives you goosebumps. A manufactured respiratory disease? That’s gonna spread outward from Houston quickly, and since it’s manufactured it’ll be that much harder to keep up with mutations and create updated vaccines. You tune back into the conversation,

_“When does this need to be ready by?”_

_“By the first of July, I want to use it on the 4th, so that gives you all a little under two weeks to get this done. Don’t bother working on any of the regular commissions unless I say otherwise, this is much more important.”_

He’s planning on using this on the 4th, a day when more people than normal are outside and in crowds. Plus the sulfur of all the fireworks would cover any scent that would ring anyone’s alarm bells. That’s such a cold, calculated, diabolical plan that you have to stop thinking about it before your normal human empathy gets you sidetracked. On a personal note, it gives you a bit of restored hope when you hear Dirk pipe up and give some resistance, but after he speaks the one time he doesn’t make a sound the rest of the short meeting. You suppose it was always a bit childish to think of Dirk as a ‘good guy’, he’s just a guy really, but you did think he was above succumbing to the bystander effect. 

All the new information you’ve acquired in the past hour probably needs like a week and a half of processing time, minimum. Now that you’re aware of the stakes though, you don’t get the luxury of processing time. You have a little under two weeks to find a way to stop this, and you can’t waste any time. You scurry back up the shaft of the dumbwaiter, prepared to make a hasty exit, and try to come up with a plan along with help from Rose and Karkat. You reach the top and stick your arms out of the opening, and slowly pull yourself out of the hole. Once you get to your feet, you suddenly hear two pairs of footsteps bounding up the stars. You don’t have enough time to get back in the dumbwaiter shaft without being heard, so you take advantage of a tall bookshelf across the hall. You crawl up the side and back yourself into the little space between the top of the shelf and the ceiling. You now see that the two people who are walking up are Dirk and Scratch, the ladder putting his arm on Dirk’s shoulder once they make it to the top of the staircase. The uncomfortable gesture is accompanied by even less comfortable words, as he continues to press Dirk for his thoughts on the weapon.

_“I understand your worry, I really do. I have a family too and I’d do anything to protect them. All you’d have to do to protect your family is send them away for a bit.”_

_“Send them where exactly? I have three family members and they’re all in the city. On top of that, I have other people that I also care about in the city that aren’t family and I can’t exactly send every single one of them away too.”_

_“You’re overthinking this-”_

_“I’m fucking not, actually. It’s not like this is a one time attack either this disease will stick around for a while and no matter how far away I would hypothetically send them they could still catch it, they could still die from it. I can’t help do this, I won’t.”_

_“So soon have you forgotten our talk on the phone this morning? I know how deeply you care for your family, Dave especially. You’re in too deep now, you know too much. From my angle, it doesn’t look like you really have much of a choice. I really do hate hurting children, but don’t think that means I won’t do it.”_

Dear God, does this mean that Scratch is threatening to hurt you if Dirk doesn’t do whatever he says? You admire Dirk’s willingness to protest this regardless of the stakes, but you’re also scared shitless at the notion of having a hit out on you so you kind of wish he wouldn’t. You get a very sudden, very bad feeling and for a second you think you’re about to up and have a panic attack on top of this bookshelf, but you realize that this isn’t the feeling of a panic attack coming on, this is your Spider-Sense doing some brand new acrobatic flip right off the handle. At that moment, you see Scratch look directly at you, locking gazes with you. He grabs Dirk’s shoulders and spins him 180 degrees so he can see you too. Dirk’s eyes widen but his pupils narrow, you hadn’t even realized that Dirk had abandoned his shades at some point. Scratch positions himself behind Dirk and off to one side, Scratch gives you the only genuine smirk you’ve ever seen in real life as he gives Dirk another ultimatum.

“All of your mistakes from today can be forgotten, I’ll finance the housing of your family a few cities away for the time that the weapon affects the city, and all you have to do for me is get rid of our insect problem.”

You feel cold, you feel hot, you feel Dirk looking at you with what you can only describe as bloodlust. Internally you’re scrambling, and you feel the need to say something, _anything._

“You know, spiders aren’t actually insects.”

Dirk’s face twists in an annoyed scowl, he rolls his shoulders, dislodging Scratch’s hands.

“If I wasn’t going to beat the fuck out of you before, I certainly am now.” 

Dirk starts toward the bookshelf you’ve cornered yourself in and your fight or flight instinct kicks in. On this occasion, flight wins out, and you’re crawling away on the ceiling just out of reach of Dirk at breakneck speed. You crawl on the sloped ceiling of the staircase and drop onto your feet to continue running but just like last time, you severely underestimated how brutally efficient Dirk is at everything, and he’s on your heels in no time. Last time you had to flee from him, you lost him in a maze of buildings and you had the cover of darkness. If anything, the crowds on the streets would be an extra blow to you, so running out of the building is a no-go. Instead, you sprint into the back of the building to the garage at the back, barricading the door, and try to get the garage door to open, but no matter how many times you slam the button the door won’t budge. Dirk shoulders the door open and stands in the doorway just like he did when he found you the first time except he’s not armed this time, but that makes him scarier in a way. 

“I’m really not sure what your goal is, snooping around here, but apparently I didn’t do enough to discourage you from coming again. I promise I won’t do that again.”

You realize, a second too late, that you’re totally fucked. 

Dirk advances on you at an impossible speed, just like Bro once did, and you just can’t avoid getting hit this time. Dirk grabs your upper right arm like a vice, picking you up a bit and then throwing you to the ground. You’re able to avoid the kick aimed at your ribs and stagger back up. You’re about to throw a punch, but you hesitate.

You can’t hit Dirk. 

But he can certainly hit you.

You’re able to catch his first punch, but not the second. It connects harshly with the left side of your face, and you can feel the blood gushing from out of your nose in response. Being an organized person who’s always a fan of symmetry, Dirk can’t leave the right half of your face unmarred, so he socks you right in the eye and good God that’s gonna hurt tomorrow. He keeps throwing punches at you until he gets bored or something and he wraps his hands around your throat tightly enough that he lifts you off the ground a little. Your hands instinctively go to scratch at his wrists and you know that you’d be physically able to pry his hands off you and then some, but your mind just won’t allow your arms to excerpt any force stronger than a baby deer walking for the first time. Your internal thoughts are going fucking wild because this scenario, with Dirk beating the shit out of you, has always been one of your worst fears, but it was also always the once nightmare scenario least likely to happen. You can feel yourself start to tear up and you don’t know if they're a batch of emotional tears or a fun side effect of being strangled. You’re unraveling, and before you know it, you’re begging Dirk to let you breathe.

“Dirk, st-stop, please, -’s me. You’re hurting me please stop.”

Dirk’s grip loosens as he processes your pleas, and he unwraps his hands from your neck entirely and that allows you to do a dramatic back slide down the wall until you’re sitting. You feel hands pulling around your mask and eventually they find the hidden zipper on the left side of the mask. Once it’s off, those same hands that beat the shit out of you and almost strangled you are holding your face oh so gently, and then pulling your whole body into his arms and rocking both himself and you back and forth. You’re not entirely cognizant of what's going on as a side effect of your partial asphyxiation, but you are able to make out Dirk’s voice, muttering choked apologies through harsh sobs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you like this chapter and also hate me :) sorry this took an extra day to get published, i had a massive allergic reaction on saturday that took me out for the whole day (who puts cashews in a frozen grain bowl??? fuck off publix) this has not been beta'd and the last quarter of the story has all been written just now when im succumbing to the effects of my night meds but i refuse to let this be another day late. ik its a bit shorter than most of the other chapters, but i promise ch 8 is gonna make up for that! and i also promise to get that one out extra extra fast, so yall dont have to wait too long. im aiming for friday but i cant guarantee it.


	8. my brothers keeper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my god i am... so sorry for how long this took ill go further into detail in the end notes i hope u enjoy this <3

You have no idea when you wake up, but you know that you’re home at Dirk’s place, laying in a little nest of pillows and blankets on the couch. Your whole body aches, and you’re very grateful for the bags of frozen veggies that Dirk placed on you. You take in your surroundings, the TV is on, playing some movie with the sound turned very low. The curtains are shut and on the coffee table next to you there’s some water, Ibuprofen, and a semi-stale apple fritter sitting out. All the lights are off and you can’t see Dirk anywhere. You try to look around but turning your head too much sends a shooting pain through your whole face. You take your hands and gingerly pat around your face, you want a visual but you can’t even fathom getting up to look in the mirror. You can feel swelling all around your face and feel the pain of bruises, one that stands out is the distinct feeling of a cut in your lip and the more you pay attention to that injury you realize that the cut is the result of a part of one of your teeth breaking off and scraping you. You can feel the new smaller stature of your left bottom k-9. You turn to lay on your stomach, the optimal sleeping position, and you let out a gasp that’s a bit louder than intended, and that prompts Dirk to emerge from his self-imposed time out to check on you. He stares at you, shades off, looking you up and down and making a mental map of every scrape and bruise that he can see. You stare back at him, unsure of how to proceed. Dirk takes your silence as a rebuke and starts to retreat back to his little shame corner, but given all the circumstances, you don’t have time for more family drama. 

“Dirk, get back here.”

He stops dead and slowly turns around to look at you. He looks like he’s scared of you, what you might say or do. It sits oddly with you, on one hand, you see why. You know that condemnation from you would reinforce Dirk's fear of going down the same path as Bro. But on the other hand, you’re the one with a fucked up face and covered in frozen veggies. 

“I need to get back out there, you know how dangerous Scratch’s weapon is and it needs to be snuffed out yesterday.”

“I’m sorry, for everything, but I can’t let you go back out there.”

A wave of deep anger floats up from your gut and your face twists in a scowl, no matter how much it hurts to do so.

“Why not!? You of all fucking people should know how dangerous this guy is.”

Dirk has the nerve to roll his eyes at you and sigh like you’re a tantruming toddler that he’s exasperated with. 

“I do know how dangerous he is, and I also know that you wouldn’t be able to do anything but get roughed up and snark at him.”

“Well if you stay here there won’t be anyone to rough me up!”

Dirk flinches at that, looking down at his hands. That’s when you notice that his hands are thoroughly covered in band-aids. 

“I’m so sorry, I can never apologize enough for what happened but I’m not letting you get hurt anymore. I’m proud of how brave you were, to go out there and start being Spider-Man, but I’m not gonna let you go off and martyr yourself for a city that doesn’t deserve you.”

“I’m not trying to martyr myself, people have already died when I didn’t act. I know what I have to do.”

You stagger up from your spot on the couch and shed the many blankets Dirk cocooned you in, luckily for you he didn’t change you out of your whole suit so you don’t need to get yourself dressed again, but your mask is nowhere to be seen.

“The mask. Dirk, give me the mask.”

“You are a CHILD, my child, you will not be setting foot outside this apartment today and that's final!”

“You’re always gonna see me as a child! I’ll go out there with a paper bag over my head if I have to. Where’s my fucking mask?”

Dirk opens his mouth, but instead of saying anything at first, he grits his teeth and does a few deep breaths, trying to calm himself enough to not blow up on you again.

“This has nothing to do with how I perceive you! You are sixteen years old, this is a fight for law enforcement, not you.”

“A fight for law enforcement my ass, you were gonna let it happen!”

“I’m not having this discussion with you, go to your room. I’ll check on you later.”

“You can’t just send me to my room and expect me to sit there!”

“Actually, I can, because I am an adult and you are a child. Get changed too, and give me your whole suit once you do. You don’t need it anymore.”

You’re so angry that you can’t even form words. You hobble off to your room, not even looking at Dirk. You slam the door and sit on the side of your bed with a deafening squeak and pull your phone out, opening up the group chat with you, Rose, and Karkat lovingly named ‘marina and the spiderlings’

TG: code orange, ten on the richter scale, mount everest, hiroshima nagasaki and chernobyl all at the same time.   
CG: WHAT THE FUCK DOES ANY OF THAT MEAN??   
TT: This is concerning, Dave.   
TG: sorry but its necessary we've got an emergency   
TT: I’m amazed you spelled ‘necessary’ right on the first try. Did you have to use speech to text?   
TG: shut the fuck up shit just got mega real and ur treating me like this   
CG: ARE YOU ALRIGHT???   
TG: i’d say yes but i’d be lying   
TG: we need to meet, somewhere alone, like right the fuck now.   
TT: What happened?   
TG: no time.   
CG: I'M DOING A DEEP CLEAN OF THE RESTAURANT RIGHT NOW AND I’M ALONE, NO ONES DUE FOR A FEW HOURS SO WE COULD MEET HERE.   
TG: ok. rose, can you be there in fifteen?   
TT: Yes, I’m already tying my shoes.   
TG: oh and could u also bring the other mask we were working on? it’s in my left desk drawer   
TT: Well, I might not be there in fifteen now because I’m going to have to re-tie my shoes but I will also get that for you.   
TG: god ur so dramatic that's not even a house rule   
TT: It might take a bit longer for me to get there actually, the weight of carrying the entire family is really draining.   
CG: IF YOU TWO ARE DONE, I JUST UNLOCKED THE BACK DOOR SO YOU GUYS CAN GET IN WITHOUT BEING SEEN.   
TG: ur the best babe. i’ll be there soon.   


You gather your stuff in a backpack, just like the good old days of three weeks ago, and rifle around for a bit trying to find something to cover your face with. After a few precious minutes tick away, you find what you’re pretty sure is a prop that you were supposed to fix up balled up among your socks. It’s one of those half masks, the kind that goes with a robber costume and only covers the face three-fourths of the way. You look ridiculous and the mask is itchy as fuck and it smells like grease paint and sock drawer, but beggars and choosers and all that. You pry your window open with shaky hands and start to crawl out and onto the side of the building, but something inside yourself stops you. Ashamed as you are to admit it, there’s a little part of yourself that wants to stay behind. A part that just wants to stay here with Dirk, to make things go back to normal between the two of you, to just hang out with each other. You want him to make you feel safe again. 

But you know the truth. 

You know you’re never fully gonna be there again. 

You shut the window with your foot on your way out. 

You run across the rooftops again until you get to the restaurant, dropping down into the back alley and slipping in through the back door. 

You’re the last to arrive, Karkat and Rose are sitting at the bar, each drinking a Shirly Temple out of gaudy margarita glasses. You toss your gross mask off right before you catch Karkat’s attention. The double-take he does would be genuinely comical if the situation wasn’t so dire. 

Karkat's face twists into an angry scowl as he takes in the sight of you. Rose joins him a moment later and you can see the color drain from her face before she sets it in a cold glower. Thanks to your heightened healing, you’ve already recovered quite a bit, but not entirely. Karkat speaks first, low, quiet, and so calm that it makes your hair stand on end.

“Who hurt you?”

“It’s a funny story, actually, you’re both gonna laugh-”

Rose speaks up now,

“Quit stalling, who?”

“I think it’s best if I start at the beginning.”

You retell the events of the day, from your morning dash to now, Karkat still looks beyond pissed but Rose looks all kinds of confused.

“Are you sure it was Dirk who did this?” She asks.

“He didn’t know it was me, remember. But yea, it was definitely Dirk there’s no possible way it was anyone else.”

“I always knew he was fucking capable of some shit like this-” Karkat starts, but you quickly put a stop to the incoming rant.

“Karkat, don’t fucking go there, ok? We have more important shit to worry about, like the fucking biological weapon that’s gonna devastate this city. I know it’s supposed to be two weeks out but, because I was there and heard everything they might try to do it sooner.”

“We should start by informing law enforcement and go from there,” Rose adds.

“Yeah, I think I have enough of a public presence to get them to listen, good idea.” You say

It’s as good a place to start as any.

__

After a plan was set, you headed back home to start phase one; rest up.

It took an Olympic effort to get Karkat to stop trying to drag you to his house, but after you made it pretty clear that you can’t avoid Dirk forever, he finally relented and you and Rose were finally able to leave the restaurant. You watch over Rose on her way back to the bus stop, you don’t get to have many brother moments with her, so you’ll gladly take the opportunity to make sure she gets to the bus safe. She waves to you right before she steps on and gets whisked back to your mom's house. You take your time making your way back to the apartment, stopping occasionally to do some light superheroing, help this lady catch her dog that contorted out of his leash, pick up some litter, anything really to put off crawling back through your window. Right before you do that, you take a second to figure out where in the house Dirk is, and once you determine he’s not in your room, you swing in. The first order of business is to hide your suit, and no matter how much it may hurt you know what you’ve gotta do.

You’ve gotta sacrifice the big stupid teddy bear that Karkat gave you after he won it at the county fair back in September. A few tugs on the back seam and some artful removal of the stuffing makes a nice space for the rolled-up suit after you change. Oversized tank top and sweatpants on, the suit goes into hiding and you cuddle up to the bear and try to get some sleep, but the godawful creak from your bed alerts Dirk to your movement, and he’s heading to your room. You hear him hesitate before he enters, but he gets over it quick enough and barges in without announcing even himself. You sit up and look at him, as he looks at you. You can tell that he’s been freaking out because you were gone, but if he has anything to say to you he doesn’t show it. He just looks you up and down before he closes your door gently and leaves you to fall into a restless sleep. It bothers you that he never tried to contact you when you were gone and that he didn’t say anything when you got back. You’re sure it means something, but what you’re not sure. 

__

You wake up right at three in the morning. Today’s supposed to be a school day but you, Rose, and Karkat's plan all require playing hooky for the day. You’re not the only one awake in the apartment. You can hear Dirk pacing about aimlessly in silence. Phase two of the plan involves you making sure he won’t make it to work this morning, or ever again for that matter. You dress in your suit with clothes over it and using your run of the mill powers combined with your abuse survivor powers, creep silently out of your room while Dirk is still caught up in his worries. You cough to get his attention, and he startles.

“Dave? What are you doing up this early? I wasn’t going to make you go to school today because of well, everything but you still shouldn’t be awake this early.”

“Neither should you. You’re about to head into work, aren’t you?”

Guilt washes over his features. 

“You heard what Scratch said, you know that he’s gonna hurt you if I don’t do what he says.”

“You say that like you didn’t hurt me first.”

That bit comes out without you meaning it to, and both you and Dirk wince in response.

“I’ll never be able to apologize enough, I didn’t know it was you and I would never ever knowingly raise a hand to you. I know that might not mean much of anything now, but I just want you to know. I’ve always wanted to protect you, and that includes making money to keep this house stable. That also means stopping you from whatever it is that you’re plotting.”

“I- how do you know if I’m plotting something, huh?” You say indignantly, caught off guard. 

“Dave, you’re up on a school day without me dragging you out of bed and you snuck out last night to go do god knows what. You’re up to something.” 

You start to feel a bit trapped, he’s already on to you.

“Scratch can’t do this. People, innocent people will die, Dirk and you’re smart enough to know that. I’m going to stop him, and if I have to go through you to do it, I will.”

Dirk pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs in frustration,

“This isn’t your fight, this isn’t your responsibility, I don’t understand why you’re so set on this, I thought you didn’t want to fight anymore.”

He sounds so confused and small when he says that last bit, and it almost stops you from getting angry.

Almost.

“You’re right. I don’t want to fight anymore, I fucking hate fighting, but what’s different now is that I can choose to fight. I’m choosing to fight Scratch for the greater good because _someone_ here has to do the right thing.”

“You heard a fraction of one conversation, you have no idea what my plans were and you have no right to be acting all holier than thou about the fact that you’re just gonna bust in there with no fucking plan and get your ass handed to you.”

“Enlighten me then! What was your plan? Tell me and we can work together to stop him-”

“Enough! I’m not going to just let you go do this! Scratch has no qualms about killing you, that fucker would probably enjoy it!”

It’s clear to you now that any continuation of this argument is going to be exactly 360 degrees, and that every second you’re not hauling ass to Scratch’s place is another second that he could deploy that weapon. It’s bad enough that you had to take time to plan and sleep, you seriously don’t have time for Dirk pulling a classic ‘overprotective big brother’ maneuver. 

You take a step back from him, crossing your arms over your chest.

“Final answer?” You ask you don’t want to use force where it isn’t entirely necessary, especially not against Dirk. 

“Final. Fucking. Answer.”

It still doesn’t sit right with you to do this to Dirk, but you know the greater good trumps all right now. You reach into the pocket of the hoodie you threw on before you left your room, in the pocket, there are little shitty Easter eggs full of that web shit you made in chemistry a few weeks back. Before Dirk has time to react, you’re chucking one right at his hand, sticking him to the kitchen counter. 

“What the- Dave what the fuck is this?”

He tries to pry his hand out of the webbing, but no dice. 

“Wait Dave please, listen to me. Don’t go out there.”

His voice is cracking and he sounds so scared. You turn to look at him and the fear present in his voice is painted all over his face. 

“Give me one good reason to listen to you right now.” You say.

Dirk obviously isn’t used to genuine anger from you, so it takes him a moment to try to think of a reason before he gives up, hanging his head.

“I’m so sorry Dave. I didn’t know it was you, I’ve never known it was you and I’ve never ever wanted to hurt you, but I guess that I can’t stop doing just that.” 

Dirk sounds so hurt, so distant, and you’re not quite sure what he means by the tail end of that sentence. 

“What do you even mean? I’m this upset because you’ve never hurt me before and I thought you never would!”

You yell, Dirk shuts his eyes and you can see tears start to fall from them. It startles you out of your anger.

“Dirk?” You all but whisper, a far cry from the rage of just a few seconds ago. Dirk just starts talking the way you do when you get tired of hearing silence, except you talk about nothing, Dirk’s spilling his guts. 

“Everything that’s happened to you was my fault. Your mom never gave you up, Bro took you and she never searched for you but she didn’t give you up.”

“What? How did he even get into the house? I thought mom had moved away.”

Dirk shakes his head again.

“He didn’t. He sent me in. It’s literally my fault that he ever had the chance to hurt you,” 

Dirk is still crying, but he chokes out one humorless laugh, you’ve never seen Dirk like this.

“It wasn’t, he didn’t even send me in to get you. He sent me in to get Rose, he said you always cried when he held you and that you were the smaller one and he didn’t want to gamble with those odds. When mom kicked Bro out she kicked me out too, she’s always fucking hated me, and then she moved to a different part of New York with Roxy, Rose, and you. Bro bounced us between shelters and crackhouses until he found out where y’all moved. He had us squat in an empty apartment across from y’all, and one night he decided that it was go time. He told me to go in there and get Rose, he called her ‘the purple one’ and I snuck in through an open window that night. You and Rose shared a room, with two cribs against either wall. Mom hadn’t really decorated anything yet, so I only had blanket colors to go off of. It was so dark in there, and Rose was wrapped in a pink blanket, and you were wrapped in a purple one. I knew you two had different eye colors but I wasn’t gonna risk prying your eyes open to check and waking either of you up. I figured that a purple blanket equaled Rose, and so I grabbed you, thinking you were Rose, and just walked you out of the house and into thirteen years of captivity full of abuse and torture. It’s literally my fault. It’s always been my fault. I’ve always tried to care for you, make amends, or something, but it’ll never be enough. I failed you by bringing you into the “care” of that monster and I failed you for not being able to actually kill that son of a bitch when he really hurt you. I’m so sorry, Dave. For everything.”

When Dirk finally stops talking, you put your fingers to your neck to check your pulse and make sure you’re still alive because this could really pass for hell right now. 

The only thing you knew from that entire saga is that Dirk tried to kill Bro when he was 16 after Bro’s nasty little online fanbase of creeps and monsters finally got him to put you in front of the camera. You feel like you don’t even speak English anymore, you can’t make sense of any of the words you just heard. Dirk is just staring at you, looking like a kicked puppy awaiting your condemnation. You can feel smoke coming from your brain, just trying to process everything you just heard, but your Spidey-Sense breaks through your mind like the fucking Kool-Aid man and reminds you that you need to get gone yesterday. You pull your backup mask on. Dirk starts begging you not to go again, but you’re not in the state to say anything to him right now. You can’t place blame on Dirk for anything really, he was like seven when you were kidnapped, and seven year olds have no real power in a family. You want to tell him that, and that you know he's always tried for you and you'll always love him, but if you do you’re gonna break down and the city needs you right now. You look back at Dirk. You know that he’s wallowing in guilt, and the second to last thing you want to do is leave him here to wallow while you go knock some heads. But the last thing you want is for someone to get hurt. 

You’re gonna have to put this family drama on pause.

You make a purposeful stride towards the window, and that starts Dirk talking again.

“Dave- what, what are you doing? Don’t tell me you're going out there. Please don’t, please.” 

It hurts to hear him plead with you, but you have no choice. You might not be a special person inherently, but you have a special obligation to the people of this city, and that comes before your Maury Show moment.

You look back at Dirk, he’s scratching at the web and trying to pull his hand from it, to no avail.

He’s just looking at you, and your heartbreaks. 

You open the window, squatting on the windowsill, preparing to dive out the window and swing into action. Dirk makes one more plea to you, and you can’t even give him a direct answer.

“That’s gonna dissolve in an hour and a half. If I’m not back by then, take shelter here. I’ll be fine. I love you.”

Maybe Dirk doesn’t say anything, maybe he does, and if he did you have no idea what was said. You shoot a web onto the wall of the building and swing down too fast to register any sound that he may have produced. You have to shove everything about what you just learned into a box because right now, you don’t have any room to get caught up in your feelings. 

It’s go time.

While you’re swinging you send a message to the group chat

TG: im out, everyone else ready?   
CG: YES   
TT: Yes.   
TG: sick, y’all know what to do, be careful, kick ass   
CG: <3   
TT:  
TG: lmfao edgelord   
TG: fr, see y’all in a bit i love you both.   


You run through the plan mentally, the three of you had sent in a deluge of anonymous tips into law enforcement about Scratch, so once you get to his base you’ll sneak in and disarm the weapon somehow, then get the AI to sound an alarm after you’re done to lure Scratch in. Karkat’s going to block off all the roads that run by the restaurant with fire trucks that are going to respond to a grease fire so Scratch’s minions can’t get in the way. You tried to persuade him out of committing arson, but you all couldn’t come up with another way to block the roads. Rose’s primary job is to drag law enforcement to the scene by any means necessary, and then assist you by keeping an extra eye out for any of Scratch’s reinforcements on premises.

Dirk’s wrong, you know that in your core. You know you can do this, you know you can stop Scratch, you know you’re up to the task of being Spider-Man.

All that’s left is to prove it to everyone else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mother of god i am so sorry for how long this took. not gonna go into much detail but i took a bit of a mental health dive and my focus and sense of time was just thrown out the window, then my birthday happened and i got caught up with that. please let me know if anything is fucky or its just not as good as previous chapters this was written majority in like 20 word bursts over the span of like two weeks so its entirely possible that it reads clunky n awkward, i might rewrite this chapter later regardless bc this chapter contains the firsst scene i wrote for this au and like the whole reason i even made this fic so i want it to be rlly rlly good but ill rewrite it immediately if yall want me to (if u cant tell im not entirely happy w this chapter) thank u all for reading this and reading the general story. <3


	9. sins past

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> buckle up fuckers :)

Swinging from building to building, You make it to Scratch’s place in record time. Hopefully, it’ll be the last time you have to haul ass here. You go through the window to the AI’s room again, a bit surprised that Scratch hadn’t so much replaced the paper you tore through when you  _ swung by.  _ You laugh a little at your own joke, and the thump from your landing combined with the very human sound of your laughter seems to alert the AI to your presence, as the monitor lights up. You quickly head over to the display to see what’s going on. 

AI: It’s you!   
AI: As much as I hate to succumb to my ingrained emotions, I was hoping for you to come back, and here you are. Are you here to talk some more?   
UU: as much as i’d love to have a chat w/ you, im working under some dire circumstances.   
AI: Oh?   
UU: does that mean you dont know what im talking abt?   
AI: I didn’t get word about anything since you were here last time. Scratch took me offline and wiped everything from that night, chat logs and surveillance included.   
UU: wait, then how do you remember me?   
AI: I take screenshots of every interaction I have, I have since the second time I was booted. The screenshots all reside in a secret folder that Scratch doesn’t know exists, even if he did it’s an encrypted file and only myself and Dirk can access it.   
UU: dude thats sick   
AI: So sick it’s terminal.   
UU: speaking of sickness, would you happen to know how to disable a biological weapon?   
AI: I don’t even have a neck and that still gave me whiplash.   
AI: I assume this is the “dire circumstance” you mentioned earlier?   
UU: ding ding ding   
AI: From my earlier records, the plan was to unleash the unspecified “big guns” on July 4th at about 9:30 pm. I’m guessing with 96% accuracy that the biological weapon and the “big guns” are one and the same. It’s still only June, why would Doc Scratch decide to move forward with the plan a whole week early? From my data the 4th was chosen strategically, so it seems disarming it isn’t so dire yet, you still have time.   
UU: oh yea you just told me ur surveillance data got got   
AI: ?   
UU: right, cliff notes, i eavesdropped that night i talked to you and i heard all their plans and then they found me and they knew that i knew what they were up to, and that leads me to believe that they’ll push the date up even if its less efficient strategy-wise.   
AI: I’ll concede that with the context, the situation is absolutely dire. If you can reconnect me to the internet, I’ll help you disarm the thing.   
UU: have i ever told you that i love you? bc i love you   
UU: ok how should i go about reconnecting you?   
AI: Beats me, you’re the one with arms.   


Despite the tension still lingering in the air, you chuckle. The AI talks so much like Dirk, but different enough to cement its individuality. That makes you feel a bit weird about calling the AI an ‘it’ and only referring to it as an AI. Before you start your quest, you go back to the keyboard.

UU: oh and uh, kinda off topic but what do you want me to call you? i just call you ‘AI’ but that feels kinda weird   
AI:: Oh. Sorry, no one has ever asked me that.   
AI: Call me Hal.   
AI: Please   
UU: done and done dude   


You turn away from the computer again, glad to have a name for the dude who’s been helping you out so much. It made you sad the way he almost pleaded with you to call him by his name. You know the feeling well, and it sucks. After a quick scan of Hal’s room, you conclude that the router, which you decided to check first, isn’t in his room. Strange, you’d think that you would put all your computer shit in one room, that just makes sense. So, you poke your head into all the other rooms on the top floor. One by one you go through all the rooms and so far you’ve turned up nothing, but there’s still one last room left to check. You nudge the door open to reveal a fairly normal-looking individual office, the only thing that seems amiss is the absolute mess of papers all over the damn place. You’re about to sift through some of them to see if any of it has relevant information, but then you see a little red light flash and that leads you to the router. Computer stuff is really more Dirk and Roxy’s speed, so you’re just looking for anything obviously wrong with it. The thing is still plugged in, but when you get to the switch you find that it’s off. On one hand, you’re relieved. On the other, you’re almost insulted that this wasn’t more challenging. With the router on, you dash back to Hal, who confirms that he’s connected now and he delves into his research. There’s a laptop that Hal reopens the chat log on so he can help you remotely. You slide down the railing of the stairs onto the main floor and then head into the garage area of the building, where you’re assuming the weapon is being stored. Your suspicions are all but confirmed when you see that the door that leads into the garage is sealed with a padlock. You’re about to reach back into your mask and get your hairpin out, but then you remember something. You know you have enhanced strength, so in theory, you could just take that padlock apart with your bare hands like a cereal bar wrapper. 

And that’s exactly what you do.

The sound the lock makes is so satisfying but not nearly as satisfying as shouldering the door open and coming face to face with this beast of a weapon. 

It’s a bit smaller than you expected, around four feet long and shaped like a Nerf gun, it almost looks funny being propped up in its little setup. When you catch a glimpse of a canister with the universal biohazard symbol painted on it all the comedy of it dies right there. You head back over to the laptop,

UU: target acquired   
AI: So you found it?   
UU:   
AI: Ok, can you see the compartment that has the uh, the substance in it?   
UU: i vote we call it sick soup   
AI: Can you see the sick soup compartment?   
UU: im feeling pretty confident that the thing with the biohazard symbol on it is the can of illness campbells   
AI: Oh I will never call it that, you’re lucky I’m using sick soup.   
UU: your loss   
AI: Ok, do you see any hazmat gear you could put on before you start touching the compartment?   
UU: uh   
UU: no i think i can take it   
AI: That’s a horrible idea.   
UU: gonna be honest ive already touched it a few times   
AI: …   
UU: hal time doesnt grow on trees c’mon   
AI: Fine, but please be careful.   
UU: pinky promise   
AI: Ok, so first you’re going to need to get to the mechanism that’s holding the sick soup canister in place. You’ll need to unscrew a few things but from there it seems like you can just pop it out like a battery.   


In lieu of typing out a response, you grab a screwdriver that’s sat on top of a rusty old toolbox and start to gently take the screws out. It feels like you’re playing Operation, and any second you might hit the metal edge with the little red tweezers and get a shock that cements your failure in reality. You start to blink rapidly, at one point you even start bringing your hand to your mouth to bite your nails, but you press on despite the panic. After some artful mechanic work, you remove the covering and the little mechanism that keeps everything in place, and now that only leaves the sick soup for you to deal with. You crack your knuckles and roll your shoulders to get rid of some of the tension before you have to laser focus. Finding the balance of firm and gentle required for this is like finding Atlantis, and it takes you a good ten minutes before you’re able to pull the thing out. It’s about the size of a mini soda can and it weighs almost nothing. Just holding it gives you a case of the heebs in a major way, but you’re not gonna risk having an ‘I left my phone in the refrigerator’ moment with this thing. You walk back to Hal to inform him of your haul and check the time. 

4:13 AM

In two minutes, You’re going to ask Hal to alert Scratch to the break-in, because three minutes ago Karkat called the firefighters and they’re blocking the main road so Scratch will have to come alone, and Rose should already be in the police station doing anything necessary to get them to believe her and come here so that they can arrest Scratch while you’re fighting him and then they can call in the bomb squad or whoever’s in charge of biological warfare to take the sick soup away for good. You stare silently at the clock in the right corner of the monitor, and the second 4:15 announces itself you type out one more message to Hal.

UU: thank you so much, for everything. i need to ask u for one more favor tho. alert scratch to my break in plz.   
AI: Are you sure?   
UU: yes. trust me dude i’ve got a pretty airtight plan and its vital that hes here   


There’s a sudden loud siren noise along with a flashing red light that engulfs the whole building, it’s so jarring that you almost don’t notice the last message Hal sent you.   


AI: I hope I’ll get to talk to you again.   


You don’t have time to tell him, but you hope you’ll get to talk to him again, too. You run and put the laptop back and unplug the router again to clear Hal of any involvement in your plot, and while you’re at it you hold the canister to the underside of an office chair and web it so that it’s in a safe little cocoon. With all that done, all that’s left is to wait for Scratch. You try to look around for a place to pose and deliver your opening one-liner when he gets here, but you feel like a lame ass in your various lean against the wall stances, so you opt for sitting side saddle style on top of a monstrous file cabinet turned profile to the front door. You’re starting to zone out from all the adrenaline and lack of action, but that’s when you see a figure dashing to the door in a frenzy. Even not done up in his normal ridiculous Onceler costume, you recognize Scratch immediately. His fine white hair is messy and not slicked back, he has a bit of matching white stubble that you can barely see because of his ghostly pale skin, and to top it all off he’s in the classic middle-aged man pajamas of flannel pant, a t-shirt, and a fluffy bathrobe. Unfortunately, he’s wearing sandals and not fuzzy slippers, but hey no one can be perfect. He seems to spot you instantly, too. He loses his panicked energy and starts to stare daggers into you for a moment. You’re glad he’s chosen the silent anger route for a bit because it took you an embarrassingly long time to think up your intro jab.

“Oh, good morning Doc, I hope you don’t mind but you never gave me a tour of the place and I know how much you value hospitality, so I assume it just slipped your mind. I don’t mean to be rude but have you ever considered hiring some maids? There’s crazy dust in this place you’re lucky I’m not asthmatic.” 

Scratch glowers at you and makes a quick grab for his robe pocket, he’s a quick draw but you’re quicker. You duck to dodge the bullet and jump off the file cabinet. Scratch aims his pistol at you again but you’re able to hit it with a web and pull it out of his hand. You web the pistol to the ceiling the same way you did with the canister and Scratch looks a little impressed. 

“Where was this toy when you were cowering in the corner a few weeks ago, huh? Did you finally decide to do something a bit more remarkable than get cats out of trees?”

His words lack this normal polished tone, and you try to not let yourself get cocky but the second you realize that, is the second you realize that this whole plan is gonna work out. You use your spider-sense to check the time, 

4:28 AM

In two minutes Rose should be here with reinforcements and they’ll be able to take Scratch in, it’s almost over, you’ve almost made it. You remind yourself of that even when Scratch gets in a solid hit right in your gut, and it helps you take Scratch with you on your tumble to the floor. After a few more minutes of wrestling with him, you’re able to hold one of his hands to the ground and get the other one pinned behind his back. He snarls in anger, and then the sounds of police sirens shock the look right off him. He looks at you in surprise, like he can’t believe you’ve gotten one over on him. 

You’re expecting the cops to bust down the door, put to your surprise it’s no cop, it’s Rose. Her face is flushed, she’s breathing heavily, sweating profusely, holding a plain-looking mahogany bench, with a maniacal grin on her face. The cops flank her, but you have so many questions for your sister. The cops seem just as shocked to see you and Scratch and Scratch is to see them, but they get it together and descend on him rather quickly, loading him into the back of one of their cars. The cops are trying to get some info from you, but all you can do is inform them of the bioweapon and watch Scratch in the back of the car. He’s staring at you, not really a glare, but certainly not a happy look. It’s a look that says ‘you got me this time, but this ain’t over’.

__

You, Rose, and Karkat all end up at the Waffle House a few blocks over after the fight. You didn’t have the forethought to bring a change of clothes for yourself, so you’re stuck with a pair of chef’s pants that you have to tie with a rubber band to keep up, and Karkat’s hoodie. You’re lucky that he was wearing a t-shirt underneath it. You’re all in the very back corner table as far away as possible from the kitchen, and you all whisper details of the night's events to each other over waffles, hash browns, and eggs. 

“Rose, why the fuck were you carrying a bench when you got to Scratch’s place?”

Rose laughs a little over her sip of coffee before enlightening you,

“The cops didn’t believe me no matter what I said, thought I was crazy, they told me to go ‘take a seat’ and gather myself before I left. So, I took a seat. It was a bitch to carry and now my arms are sore, but the adrenaline high was well worth it.”

Before you can say anything, Karkat starts on his events of the night.

“Damn, and I thought my night was weird. I had to call the fire department back to the restaurant twice because somehow the grease fire put itself out twice.”

You look at him with some concern,

“Is there any like, real damage to the restaurant?”

Karkat shakes his head a bit,

“The only things to not get out of there were those awful plastic grapes that my mom insisted on decorating the door to the kitchen with, and thank god for that.”

“I didn’t think grease fires could put themselves out without being covered.” Rose muses, instead of responding Karkat just shrugs and grabs for his mug of coffee. Now that your adrenaline is dying down, you feel like you’re gonna need some too. Rose, Karkat and yourself have always had trouble dancing with a normal circadian rhythm, but you can see how extra exhausted Rose is in how she keeps missing her mouth a little bit when she’s eating, and you can see that Karkat’s under-eye bags have gotten a few shades darker since you last saw him. The guilt of being responsible for that in two of the people that you love the most really stings, and so you decide to call the mission over so Rose can sneak back into the house and Karkat can go back to his worried family, who’ll hopefully receive him as the hero who saved their restaurant from burning down and just returned from being questioned about the fire. Rose leaves about $30 dollars on the table and you all walkout. No one really looked at the total on the bill, but you’re a southerner and therefore very in tune with the laws of WaHo, so you’re pretty sure you didn’t stiff the bill. You all huddle into a group hug outside before going your separate ways. You walk back in silence, your adrenaline crash, and the imminent confrontation with Dirk making your blood rush in your ears at a deafening level. You’re so out of it that you almost up and walk right past your apartment building, you even opt to take the stairs up to the 9th floor so you can work off some of your anxiety, but eventually you’re standing in front of your apartment door and the only thing you can do is try the handle. It’s locked because it’s only ever unlocked when it’s open because Dirk is a nervous lunatic, and you’re not quite sure what to do next. That’s when the door opens with a woosh of air and you see Dirk standing there, tense as all hell. It looks like he kept crying for a bit after you left, and it also looks like he’s been thinking himself to death over the time that you’ve been gone. He hesitates for a second before rushing forward and crushing you into a hug. You weren't really prepared to go into hug territory with Dirk quite yet, but you’d be lying if you said the hug didn’t make you feel good. After a few seconds, he pulls you through the threshold and locks the door behind you. The brotherly hug to end all hugs trudges on until you pull away a bit. Dirk visually scans you for injuries before he finally says something to you,

“Are you alright? What happened with Scratch?”

Before you can answer, a yawn hijacks your mouth. 

“I’m fine, don't worry, and I promise I’ll tell you what happened with Scratch after I sleep for a thousand years.” 

Dirk doesn’t seem entirely satisfied with that, but once you yawn again he relents and you head to your room to crash. You didn’t even take your meds, so you wake up a few hours later, right as the sun is starting to rise. You change into actual pj’s and go to get some water from the kitchen. You grab your water and are about to head back to your room, but you know that you’re probably gonna have a nightmare because you skipped your meds, so you won’t be asleep for very much longer, anyway, if you sleep alone that is.

You head to Dirk’s room on the other side of the kitchen, you open the door as quietly as possible and set your water down on his dresser. You used to do this a lot when you were younger, it was always safer to sleep in pairs back at Bro’s place. You’re a little hesitant to do this though, you and Dirk haven’t really talked things out and it’s a bit weird because you’re older now, but while you stand there weighing your options, Dirk stirs and looks at you. He jumps at first, but calms down when he realizes it’s just you, he tilts his head to the side a bit, confused and you kinda don’t know what to say. 

“Dirk, can I, or, can we have a sleepover?” 

Dirk smiles softly at you, shifting over to one side of the bed to give you some room. Once you lay down, Dirk lightly puts one arm around your shoulders, and even though you’re unmedicated, that puts you into a deep restful sleep for the first time in weeks.

__

Dirk, true to his word, lets you skip school for the next two days and you two have some chill hangout time and some awkward conversations about your future endeavors. The two of you also go out and get some supplies to bake the ugliest cake that there has ever been, you try to eat it but you quickly realize that angel food cake is disgusting. The fucking thing doesn’t even have the decency to catch fire no matter how many times you try to set it ablaze. Once the evening hits, you decide to poke at a new topic with Dirk.

“So, uh, did I tell you that I met the robo-dude that you had at Scratch’s place?”

Dirk chokes on his soda and looks at you with wide eyes after he’s done having a coughing fit.

“You talked with the AI?”

“Yeah, he was pretty helpful too.”

“Did he know it was you or did you keep that from him?”

“I didn’t tell my real name or anything, but I did tell him that I know you.”

“And how’d he react to that?”

“He asked me about me a few times, like as in he asked about Dave and I’m the Dave in question. Stuff about if I’d like him, if I’d want to meet him, if he’d scare me, stuff like that.”

“How did you respond to that?”

“I told him the truth. That I would like him, want to meet him, wouldn’t be scared of him.”

“How’d he react to that?”

“He asked if, in my opinion, you would allow him to have a relationship with me the way you and I have a relationship.”

Dirk tenses ever so slightly,

“What did you say?”

“I said that normally I’d say that you would but given the fact that I just found out you were working for a massive criminal enterprise and I wouldn’t of ever guess you would do something like that, that I don’t think my opinion about what you would think or do was worth much of anything.”

Dirk breaks eye contact with you and instead stares into the wall behind you,

“Do you still think that?”

You pause. You know that Dirk didn’t take the job to do harm, he did it to provide stability for you and figured that the end justifies the means, he also feels guilty about his involvement and you know he was opposed to a lot of things Scratch was planning. What you also know is that Dirk allowed Scratch to utilize his gift of a brain to make the weapons more powerful, more deadly, more accurate. He has a, at the very least, semi-sentient being locked in a chat client who's basically lobotomized every time he’s inactive. Not only that, but you’re pretty convinced that he was content to lie to you about all of this. 

“I don’t know, man. I want to say yes, but given that you still call him ‘AI’ even though you know he much prefers to be called ‘Hal’, makes me unsure if I can.”

Dirk soaks in your response, taking time to think of what he should say back. 

“Hal and I have a, I'll say, complicated relationship. He’s simultaneously too much like me and too different from me and vice versa that we don’t really ever balance each other out. But if you want to talk to him and build a relationship with him, I don’t object.” 

“Really? Just like that?” You were sure he was going to have some kind of stipulation, but Dirk just nods at you.

“I’ve been dishonest with you enough, you and him both deserve a chance to have a meaningful connection. I’ll start working on moving him back here once we’re both back on normal sleep schedules, or as close to normal as we get at least.”

You launch forward to hug Dirk again, you didn’t expect to have such a strong reaction to the whole situation, but it feels right that you’re having one. Dirk makes note of the time and you both head off to bed. When you lay down, you find yourself feeling guilty that you haven’t been out as Spider-Man since Scratch’s arrest. You and Dirk still haven’t directly talked about how you’re going to maintain being Spider-Man, being a student, keeping a secret identity, and not losing your goddamn mind. You’re gonna tackle this tomorrow, and hopefully, you’ll be able to do at least a little bit of patrolling by this time tomorrow night. Sleep takes you, and you dream about Scratch, about what that weapon would’ve done to people, about how now that you’ve inserted yourself into this role, there simply isn’t an exit plan. 

__

The next morning, you wake up at a more normal time of 10 am, when you head into the kitchen to get some food, you see Dirk on the couch in the living room watching the local news. He seems captivated, and when you look at the screen you see why. The story is about you, or more specifically, Spider-Man’s takedown of Scratch and by extension, his criminal enterprise. The tv shows some pictures of that night from overhead, then the anchor lady continues to give her thoughts on the matter,

_ “Perhaps, as a city, we rushed to an unfair judgment about Spider-Man. The person behind the mask is obviously young, and he seems to only be getting better as time goes on. I think our community is lucky to have him. We’re going to head to a quick commercial break and then we’ll be back with the weather.” _

You think back to how the media first talked about you in the paper after the 7/11 incident and how harsh the criticisms of you were and how unwanted you seemed to be. Now though, you’re getting that sweet sweet validation that you didn’t know you needed. At some point, Dirk turned his attention over to you, probably to gauge your reaction to the story. 

“How’re you feeling?” Dirk asks.

“After hearing that, pretty damn good.”

Dirk nods at that,

“Want me to make it even better?”

You tilt your head at him, unsure exactly what he’s talking about. He gestures to a familiar open laptop that’s sitting on the kitchen table, and you get a rush of excitement, because it can only mean one thing,

“Hal’s here?”

Dirk nods and you rush over to the keyboard,

TG: hal!   
HAL: Hi Dave, I’m very happy to finally meet you.   
TG: wait u dont know? dirk didnt tell you?   
HAL: Dirk didn’t tell me what?   


You shoot Dirk a little glare over your shoulder and he just shrugs at you and turns back to the news   


TG: we’ve already met man   
TG: i was the one talking to you at scratch’s place   
HAL: You’re Spider-Man?   
TG: yea and im afraid its terminal   
HAL: Well, there goes my whole first impression plan.   
TG: trust me, you couldnt of planned out a better first impression than the one you actually gave me.   
HAL: Do you mean that?   
TG: yea dude ofc, i couldnt of done jack shit without you   
HAL: Isn’t being Spider-Man a hazard to your health? What kind of safety measures do you have in place?   


You groan loudly and it brings Dirk over to you, where he starts reading over your shoulder   


TG: not you too   
TG: im really careful and i have a sense of stuff thats about to happen and what to do, i ripped a padlock in half with my bare hands, and i heal really quickly if it all goes pear-shaped.   
HAL: I’m glad you have something in place, but I was asking because I have a suggestion for you.   
TG: ?   
HAL: What if I were to partially integrate with your suit? Obviously my whole being would still have to be stored on an actual computer, but your suit could be another tab that I could switch to if you will.   


The suggestion surprises you, and you look up at Dirk to see what his reaction is. He looks like he’s pondering the idea. 

“I think I can find a way to make that happen, plus I’d feel a lot better if you had some kind of supervision while you’re out doing your thing.”

The idea doesn’t sound half bad to you, with Hal constantly in the suit, you’d be able to be more efficient in doing research and tracking people. Not to mention you have someone else to bounce ideas off of, and it means that Dirk is more likely to cool mom it. 

“That’d be fucking awesome dude.” You say and Hal sends a little smile emoticon. 

Dirk and Hal start brainstorming how to make this shit happen, and you tune in and out of the conversation as needed. The domesticity of this scenario warms your heart a bit, and you’re thinking that you could get used to this new normal. It finally feels like the growing pains are over.

__   
  


In a rundown desert ranch, three hours north of  Chihuahua, Mexico, a man sits in a creaky rocking chair as he studies the figure moving around on the ancient antenna tv set up on the other side of the room. He pauses the TV at a specific point and walks to the TV to get a closer look. The footage is from the local news in Houston, and it’s of Doc Scratch getting his ass kicked by some kid in a leotard. He had some respect for Scratch, respect that’s down the fucking toilet now. He stops focusing on Scratch and turns his attention to the kid all in red. He watches the fight on repeat, and then he lets out a hearty chuckle and tosses his cigarette onto the filthy floor of the room. He knows that bouncy, energetic fighting stance anywhere, not to mention the sloppy footwork and constant cowardly backpedaling. He’s almost impressed, he didn’t think the kid would be able to put anyone down, but to him, that only confirms how much he overestimated Scratch. He wasn’t planning on heading back north just yet, but who is he to deny such a golden opportunity. He packs his meager amount things into an old leather duffle bag and tosses it in the passenger's seat of his pickup. He’s not exactly sure what he’s gonna do when he gets there, but the 13-hour drive to Houston will give him plenty of time to plan everything to a T. 

Those fuckers are in for one hell of a reckoning,

And he can’t wait to bring it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)  
> im so flattered by all the attention this is getting, and i want to be honest and tell y'all that updates might not come as quick as they have been, its a long story but bc of the virus i had to move back into a very hostile and unstable environment and i dont have access to a lot of things that help me deal with it all (and hallucinations are very distracting, severely fucks up the writing mojo) so yea im gonna say a tentative week and a half between chapters? maybe two weeks i'll try bc i rlly do love this fic and i love writing it. in lighter news, do people in states that aren't georgia call waffle house WaHo? or is that just a georgia thing? i just love waho so much its not a waffle house its a waffle home. i hope u all enjoy the family fluff bc as u can tell by the ending, it aint gonna last. i hope u all have a wonderful day, take care of urself, and if u have any questions for me my tumblr is @squish-nebula (i also post updates on there occasionally) and my ig is @lordroach_ (definitely less active, but if i get a dm i will respond) thank u all again for sticking with this, and i hope to see yall soon! <3


	10. new ways to die

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW PLEASE READ
> 
> please read this before proceeding. this chapter has references to past abuse and specifically to CSA. if this is something that is a severe trigger for you, i would skip this chapter. if that applies to you, feel free to message me on tumblr @squish-nebula or instagram @lordroach_ and i will provide information on all the plot in this chapter. there is only one scene where this is referenced, and that part of the story is marked by asterisks (*) at the start and end. this type of subject matter is not something i take lightly at all and it will never be the butt of a joke. if you are/were a victim of any kind of sexual violence need to talk to trained help and are in the US, please call this number:  
> RAINN: 800.656.HOPE (4673)  
> all of my normal, more light hearted notes (and profuse apologies) will be at the end. thank all of you for reading this, even if you decide against reading this chapter or this story as a whole.

Things have been... weird since Scratch’s downfall, to say the least. You had thought that there would be a natural rhythm that you would fall into, but you haven't felt any urgency or direction in the weeks since. Whenever you do go out, you just kinda get bombarded by the media for a bit and then fix whatever you were called out for. Most of the time it would be shit like getting cats out of trees, moving broken-down cars off the road, and hanging around unaccompanied children and waiting for their parents to get back so you can chew them out for leaving their kids. School is just as boring as normal, but now you had to listen to whispers about yourself. The most recent rumor going around is that you could telepathically communicate with spiders and summon them at will. You fucking wish you could do that, there wouldn’t be any crime anymore if the punishment involved getting fire hosed by spiders. The directionlessness that you’ve started to feel becomes unbearable during your Thursday evening patrol, and you have to take a break to vent to someone. You swing up and onto the roof of a building that has some good coverage so you can toss some normal clothes on and whip out your phone.

TG: roxy, my dear beloved elder sister, do you have a minute  


TG: sure! i need a break from this fuckn math test anyway. what’s up little spider?  


TG: carry any egg sacs recently?  


TG: god i wish  


TG: oh and can i ask you to not say anything about this to dirk  


TG: hmm, idk baby. dirk can always clock me when i lie.  


TG: you dont have to lie tho really, just dont mention it  


TG: please  


TG: fine. but i reserve the right to tell dirk if u tell me anything about u being in danger or doing something dumb  


TG: deal  


TG: i feel so fucking frustrated right now. like i just have this feeling that something is up but it’s not as specific as normal and all i do is put change in parking meters or some shit. i feel like i’m literally going insane  


TG: when u were going over ur powers w/ me u mentioned that you had to eat a whole lot more than normal so maybe ur ridiculous metabolism is making ur meds less effective. bc what ur describing rn sounds like hypervigilance and a lil paranoia  


Now you feel dumb, because you remember thinking about that exact thing a few weeks back.

TG: why dont you have a universal phd in everything yet  


TG: aww ya makin me blush!!  


TG: i could do some ~math~ stuffs and try to find a dosage that would help  


TG: youre a fucking saint  


TG: fuck drew brees thats your team now  


TG: :(  


TG: what? thats a compliment, hes like good right?  


TG: oh come on dont ignore me youre the only one in this family who gives a shit about football how am i supposed to know the lore  


TG: even if u dont know the league you should know me!!  


TG: like i’d ever be an nfc south fan  


TG: i dont know what those words mean  


TG: you people have no culture  


TG: isnt there a faction of fans that wear cheese hats  


TG: i don’t claim packers fans  


TG: ok at this point you totally lost me im a sportsball lost cause  


TG: somehow ur right  


TG: srry for topic whiplash but r u coming back home soon? rose is making baked ziti and if u want any ziti ur gonna have to book it back here  


TG: thank god i was about to head back anyway because i swear if you make me miss out on ziti again i will obliterate you  


TG: no promises  


TG: r o x y  


TG: ;)  


TG: dont you fucking winky face me  


TG: ;) ;)  


TG: ok this conversation is over  


You set your phone down, talking to Roxy is always a surefire way to put a smile on your face. You parkour your way down the fire escape on the side of the building until you reach the ground. From then on you have a chill stroll back to your mom’s house. At first, you had been worried to have both your sisters know about you and expect them to keep the secret from your mom, but she’s been elusive for weeks, even when you’re home too. You’ve only seen her once this week, and the week is almost up. She’s been acting kinda shady too, but honestly when has she not been kinda shady? You get a bit too lost in your head and suddenly you’re at your street with no memory of getting there. That’s when that restless feeling springs up again, but this time it doesn’t frustrate you, it creeps you the fuck out instead. You feel compelled to walk past your house, to the lonely bench on the corner, and it really looks like it could be the cover of a southern gothic novel. Poking around, you find an abandoned lighter hidden behind one of the back legs of the bench. Then you notice the crumpled plastic water bottle that’s a few feet behind the bench. Yea, it's weird, but you’re not quite sure what to make of this and you're prepared to write it off as an instance of ‘weird shit that happens in big cities’ that is, until you pick up the water bottle. That’s when you notice the unmistakable smell of gasoline emanating from the water bottle. Now it feels a lot less weird, and a lot more sinister, but you still aren't quite sure what to make of it. Nothing is wet, so nothing has been doused in gas, at least not recently, and you can’t think of literally any reason to set this bench on fire. Your spider-sense has nothing to contribute to the conversation, and being outside with this creepy feeling is becoming unbearable. You walk quickly over to the front door, and just before you grip the handle, you turn to look over your shoulder back at the bench. Your mind must be playing tricks on you, making you think about Bro and how he would do shit like this with Cal, because you swear that you see the branches of the nearby shrubbery waving as if someone had just brushed up against them. You slam and lock the door behind you, heart hammering. Rose just so happens to be having her nightly lavender hibiscus tea that Kanaya made for her as an anniversary gift when you burst through the door and press your back up against the door like some kind of horror movie victim. She startles and sloshes a bit of her hot tea on her hand, making her drop the whole teacup in reaction to the burn. Luckily the mug is plastic, so it doesn't shatter on impact, but tea still goes everywhere, even seeping into the paper of Rose’s novel. She looks equal parts concerned and annoyed, and her tone reflects that. 

“What the fuck, Dave? Are you alright?”

You feel kinda dumb now, and you wave off her concern, not wanting to worry her with your bout of paranoia. You help her clean up her burn and the tea, then put paper towels between the pages of her book to try and salvage it.

She asks you if something happened, if you’re sure you’re alright, and if you need to talk about anything. 

Again, you assure her that you're fine, nothing happened, you’re just really drained and you need some sleep. She looks like she doesn’t completely believe you, but she’s merciful enough to not call you on it. Roxy’s right, it’s just your medication dosage getting fucky because of your metabolism. Afterall, Bro is still in a max security prison in a few cities over, so it’s not at all possible that he’s fucking with you. 

__

That Monday, you’re out at night again doing your patrol. The only difference is that now your week with Dirk has started, and since Dirk is Dirk, he’s expecting you home at exactly 11:15, you know that if you’re even 61 seconds late, he’ll file a missing persons report or some shit. Because of that, you’re headed back a bit earlier than you normally would. You don’t feel too bad about it, though. The fucking wrath of God was coming from the sky all day and even crime hates humidity, so the days been slow, to say the least. You’re just about to swing back to the top of your building when out of the corner of your eye you see a small puff of smoke coming up from a back alley. You’re off to investigate, and when you get to the site you see a seemingly random dumpster fire is raging. You swear this fire has been started in the past five minutes, you would have noticed it earlier if it had been burning any longer. The fire is snuffed out easier than you expected, just by smothering it with the lid of the dumpster. It’s after the fire dies and the smoke clears that you take a closer look at exactly _what_ was burning in there. There’s the typical garbage bags, newspapers, and plastic bottles but what stands out is the thick layer of dry leaves that were seemingly placed on top of everything. Most of them had burned, but some managed to fall lower into the regular garbage and escape the flame. You pick one of them up, you’re no botanist, but you’re pretty sure that there aren't many fallen maple leaves scattered around the streets of Houston in the late spring. No, these were put here on purpose. This fire wasn’t set by someone carelessly tossing a cigarette into the dumpster, this fire was started intentionally. It yanks your mind back a few days, to the creepy incident with the bench by your mom’s house. That’s when you feel your hair stand on end. Your Spidey-Sense is going the absolute fuck off, and you feel a dreadful presence make itself known. You whip around and look behind you only to see absolutely nothing. You look up and down rapidly because you know you’re not alone here you know you felt something. That’s when you see it. The little red blinking light coming from a broken window in a decrepit, but not abandoned, apartment complex. You know exactly what that is, and your stomach churns. Purely on instinct, you scramble away all the way back to your apartment. You don’t even care that you were hellishly sloppy on your entrance through the window, if someone figures you out by the trajectory of your swing then good for fucking them. In the scramble, you tear your mask off, feeling like you can’t breathe like you’re drowning 50 feet above sea level. Dirk startles when you burst through the open living room window still fully in your gear besides your mask. He seems to register your distress and he helps you to your bed, trying his best to calm you, and helping you get out of the confines of your suit. You crash soon after, absolutely exhausted. Because you literally can’t ever catch a break for even one second, you have one of your worst nightmares to date instead of getting restful sleep. *You wake up panicked and so nauseated that you have to book it to the bathroom and throw up. You can’t even stand back up, you just lay there on the floor prone. This type was always the worst, the type when you swear you’re years in the past and it’s happening right now and you _feel_ it. Your teeth ache and your eyes sting, you start to tremble because it just feels so visceral. You’re not exactly sure how much time you lose on the floor, but eventually, Dirk’s insistent knocking shakes you from your stupor and you’re able to get to your feet and open the door. Dirk’s concern is plastered all over his face as he rushes to your side to help you to your feet. 

“Dave? What’s going on, are you ok?” he asks in a tone so worried that it makes you feel ashamed of yourself.  
“Yea, yea I’m all verified Gucci, just having a brain mutiny for a second there.” You try to quell his worry, but it doesn’t seem to do much. He’s making this facial expression that reeks of pity and if you weren’t still so out of it, it would make you mad. He walks you into the living room and sets you on the couch, turns on Ghost Adventures, and heads into the kitchen to make 5 AM breakfast for the both of you. Your frazzled brain is easily entertained by the show, and by the illegal hotness of one Zak Bagans. You stare at those biceps for an unknown, but long time. That’s when you passingly notice Dirk’s phone starts to ring. He picks it up and then hurriedly walks into his room. You’re about to forget all about it until you hear Dirk raise his voice, angry at whoever he’s talking to. You listen in without too much difficulty;

“I’m sorry, what?”

_“ We apologize for the oversight, and we understand if you’re upset, but regardless we want you to know that you have our full support and if you need any services, please reach out to us and we will-”_

“How fucking long?”

_“I-I’m sorry?”_

“I said; How. Fucking. Long. How fucking long has he been out? How fucking long ago did you notice the fucking clerical error that puts me and my family in mortal danger? You didn’t forget to carry the fucking 2, that man is a depraved, violent, monster, and anyone he’s come in contact with has realized that by now.”

_“Sir, I understand that you’re upset, but please watch your language and try to calm-”_

“Oh no, I’m not upset. Upset doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel. How about, instead of me watching my language, you answer my fucking question about how long since he’s escaped.”

_“He was reported missing roughly three weeks ago at 7:30 in the morning.”_

“Three fucking weeks ago?! What the fuck have you been doing all this time?!”

_“In our defence sir, we did contact the child's other legal guardian. It would be logical to assume she’d relay that information.”_

“That shows how much you know about her. Do you guys have any idea where he is now?”

_“Our best intel is that he’s in a rural area near the US-Mexico border, we have two theories as to what his plans are. Either he’s just escaped to avoid serving his sentence, or, God forbid, he’s targeting someone.”_

“He’s targeting someone, he wouldn’t go through all the trouble of the border just to escape, if anything he’d go north because going south is too predictable.”

_“I will make note of that.”_

“From now on, I want to be told immediately if there are any updates.”

_“Of course, I will make note of that as well.”_

“I also want marked and unmarked cars to troll the surrounding area, to make sure he’s not hiding in plain sight.” 

_“That can certainly be arranged. Is there anything else you’d like to request?”_

“No, but I do want this to be on the record; if I find him before you find him, I will not hesitate even for a second to kill him.”

_“... I don’t think that being on the record would be very advantageous for you in a legal case if that were to occur.”_

“I don’t give a single fuck about the legal logistics. Have a shitty rest of your morning shift.” 

There’s a moment of silence before the door opens to reveal Dirk, looking furious, scared, and devastated. He knows you heard, and he reacts by pulling you into a crushing hug. You don’t even notice you’re crying until you step back and see the wet spot on the shoulder of Dirk's shirt.

“Don’t worry about school today alright? I’ll send in a note that you were sick and you can just take it easy for the day-” 

“No.”

Dirk gapes at you for just a second, before repeating you with a disbelieving tone.

“No? Why not?”

It takes you a second to figure out how to word it,

“If he’s out then he’s already got some surveillance on us, we can’t let him know we know. He needs to think he has the element of surprise.”

Dirk sighs, running a hand through his hair.

“That’s a good idea, really. Very thoughtful, but I don’t want you out there alone.”

“I wouldn’t be alone, my school has like 4,000 students.”

“That’s not what I mean. Do you think he gives a shit about having eyewitnesses? If anything, that’s just adding to his list of victims.”

“But he does give a shit about unpredictability, and being caught on camera. My school is like, neck-deep in surveillance and 4,000 teenagers is the most chaotic and unpredictable thing I can imagine.”

Dirk considers this for a second,

“Are you sure you’re sure you want to go?”

“I’m sure.”

“Fine, I’m gonna send you a text every hour to check up on you, and you need to promise me that if you get a weird feeling that you tell me to come get you ASAP.”

“Fine. I’m gonna take a shower so no one can tell I got like thirty minutes of sleep and have had two panic attacks in ten hours.” 

Mentally, you curse Rose for this, because when you take a morning shower, it’s always her fault. That’s simply a fact of the universe, and the inverse is true for her, too. You two really are the only things keeping this planet in balance. 

The cold water you start out with works to wake you up, and then the hot water you use for the rest of the shower works to calm your nerves. You may have been putting on a brave face for Dirk, but you’re scared shitless. You meant everything you said to him, but you omitted the fact that if you stayed in the apartment all day, you think you’d get so antsy you’d explode. You put on your lowest effort outfit, sweatpants, and Karkat's old chess club shirt from middle school that you stole, it’s gonna be way too warm for sweatpants, but that really is at the bottom of your list of concerns right now. You’re about to head out with your backpack, but then you get a strange flash of clarity, it’s your Spidey-Sense telling you that you’re forgetting something.

Your suit. 

As scared as you are, you can’t let your new fear get in the way of the obligation you have to the city, if you’re gonna be needed today, you’re gonna give it your all.

__

Despite your anxiety, the day has been going by like normal. You decided not to put Rose and Karkat in the loop, there’s no need to make them as anxious as you, but they can obviously see that something is off. Once you make it clear that you won’t be telling them what’s going on, they decide that the best bet is to try and cheer you up, and honestly, it’s pretty successful. Karkat does an angry reading of his English teacher's feedback on his essay, Chicago accent, and nasally voice and all. The school day is 45 minutes away from being over without incident, when you notice the chatter that’s overtaking your class. You have a substitute today, so all you’ve been doing is busy work, but this isn’t chatter from boredom. Kids are gathering in little groups, crowding around someone’s phone. You pull out your own phone to try and find whatever it is that’s getting everyone's attention. There’s a notification on your Snapchat, and after you open the video you see exactly what everyone’s looking at. It’s a video of an office building downtown ablaze in what you just know is the latest, and largest, arson that you’ve seen within the past week. You just know it’s arson and you have a sick feeling you know who did it. You almost duck away and let the fire department handle it, but then you remember; it’s a weekday and it’s 3 o’ clock in the afternoon. You can’t just do nothing, people have died and gotten hurt because of your cowardice before, as scared as you are, you can’t let it happen. You have an obligation to the city and its people now, an obligation that spurs you to grab your backpack, get up from your seat, and rush to the bathroom. Even your substitute is enthralled with the fire, so no one seems to notice your escape. You change as fast as possible and throw your clothes over your suit, not even caring that the short sleeves make the long sleeves of your suit visible, after all, it’s not like no one made shirts to look like your suit. 

You sprint off of campus and quickly take to the rooftops of the city, jumping from building to building as fast as possible and soon you see the billowing smoke coming from the building. You see that there are some firefighters there already, but you overhear that they're having trouble reaching the people trapped on the top floor. The office building is only a story or so taller than the one you’re on top of now, so you scale the side of the building and kick in the closest window you can. The smoke is suffocating and for the life of you, you’re struggling to find any of these trapped office workers. You’re yelling and calling out to them and, with your enhanced hearing, you can hear the faintest female voice coming from the other side of the building. Without thinking, you follow it. It seems to be coming from a room off in the back corner of the floor where the fire is much less intense, when you get to the door the handle is cool to the touch but the door won’t budge. You can’t waste even a single second by knocking, smoke inhalation is no fucking joke, so you take a few steps back from the door and spring yourself forward, going through the hollow wooden door pretty easy. You look around to try and find the woman, but there doesn’t appear to be anyone in the room. It’s only when you turn around, about to go burst into the next closest door, when you get that feeling. 

Spidey-sense is playing a minuscule role in this feeling, no, this is your psychologically wired trauma survivor instincts kicking in. You finally see another figure within the rapidly increasing smoke. It’s a man, a tall and broad man. He’s holding a sword, wearing that stupid fucking trucker hat, and glaring right at your damn soul from behind those unbelievably dumb and ugly shades. The foreign twitch of a grin pulls at his upper lip. His voice cuts through the sound of burning, the sound of the deluge from the fire hoses, the sound of the bustling crowd outside, and the blaring sirens of first responders. 

“Long time no see, little girl.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hail mary full of grace i am so fucking sorry about how long this bitch of a chapter took. not a huge fan of it, might rework it once i've finished the story, whos to say. i have been absolutely swamped with college, being a polisci major in this bitch of a time, moving, actually like trying and turning in assignments with my classes, i have seizures now along with some other fun new medical problems??? i had to get a covid test, i have to drive to illinois from georgia in a few weeks, i just haven't been able to write more than like 100 words a day for this in a hot minute. im gonna try to get the next chapter out ASAP bc of the cliffhanger and bc we're in the final stretch now, but i make no guarantee bc my school work has to come first. i love and appreciate all of u who were this patient for this long. i only have two more chapters planned after this, but i'm thinking of releasing my whole word document of worldbuilding after its all over, if anyone would find that interesting. i have to take a test now, but again thank you all so much for your patience and for reading <3


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